Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Maybe the grubmling toffs have a point about education in the UK these days.

'Cool Cash' card confusion - News - Manchester Evening News
A LOTTERY scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by Camelot - because players couldn't understand it.

Speaking as someone who's assembled a home theatre system from instructions completely in Japanese (2 pictures!) I can see instructions being complicated especially if the concept is a little abstract. I think Camelot did the right thing.
The Cool Cash game - launched on Monday - was taken out of shops yesterday after some players failed to grasp whether or not they had won.

See? Exactly. It's unclear and unnecessarily complicated. Hunh, sorry? Didn't catch that last part.
To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a
temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. As the game had a
winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing.
But the concept of
comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for some Camelot received dozens
of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for
example, -5 is higher than -6.
Say fucking what? Scratch everything I just said. Seriously, what the fuck?
Tina Farrell, from Levenshulme, called Camelot after failing to win with several cards.
...
"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it.
"I think Camelot are giving people the wrong impression - the card doesn't say to look for a colder or warmer temperature, it says to look for a higher or lower number. Six is a lower number than 8. Imagine how many people have been misled."

Look, I know how you can sort this out. Spend ONE WINTER in Canada. When your balls come back out of your stomach, the temperature has gone back up to -20. (That's cold for you Brits out there.)
The worst part is they could find a Teacher Association type who could comment without using the word 'fuck.' How much prozac is that guy on?
Peter Hall, of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, said: "The concept of minus numbers is something we would cover with 11 or 12 year olds, and we would expect them to have come across it before.
"The concept of smaller numbers is something that some people do seem to struggle with. Seven is clearly smaller than eight, so they focus on that and don't really see the minus sign. There is also a subtle difference in language between smaller - or lower - and colder. The number zero feels lower."
[my emphasis...just to bridge to my next sarcastic comment]
Again, unless you've been to a winter.
HT to the Galloping Beaver

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