ARGENTINA and numbers!

There are 89 replies in this Thread which has previously been viewed 13,480 times. The latest Post () was by JAN.

1st Official Post

    yesterday a friend of mine, Leo, came by unexpected by my house....he was doing some work nearby and wanted to say hi.

    We had a few beers and talked about everything......at a certain point he asked me how much I use per month for heating my house with my salamandra, wood oven, as only heating source. I told him the years before I used around 300 kg of quebracho per month, which cost 800 per 100.....so around 2400 pesos/monthly......but to make it more accurate I gave him the usd amount....around 50 usd, (last year by 40-50 peso/usd).

    He said to me I can't use that term since there is 8 different usd rates......at the end I give up, and say use whatever rate u want........I cannot be more explicit.....

    Was nearly like he was blaming me of the usd mess and numbers. (It's a good friend so no hard feelings).


    But this leads me to be thread title:


    Wtf is it with argentinean people not knowing how to use numbers and percentages????? I'm amazed every day of the lack of knowledge of numbers and their meaning.


    If I say 7......what is 7? A lot? A little?

    It's a lot if it's new popes moving into Vatican, because only one there now...

    but if it's chinese learning to play banjo, it's a small number.... because China has 1.7 billion people!!!!!

    So numbers are always related to other numbers.....just standing alone it does not say anything.


    When talking about coronavirus I constantly get presented with this misleading facts.....f.ex. talking about which barrios has most coronavirus cases......no mentioning of that some of them are 10 times bigger than the other ones mentioned. Or when talking about which provinces has most cases.... Buenos Aires and BA province has around a third of whole country population....please keep that in mind!!!!


    Seems like to put numbers in perspective and use percentage is not very used in Argentina......just look at how they always are talking about how many infected around world, never mention that still extremely few tests are done....an important factor!

    Also always talking about 5-10 bigger countries and comparing them to u is just absolute nonsense!!!!


    The blame game always come up when u mention usd...."u r a foreigner blabla".......I don't use dollar term because I'm tourist or foreigner, I use it to be more accurate talking about stuff!

    If they have that big problem with using usd as a reference, just make an index of bananas, milk, yen, usd, euros, goats castrated in turkey or whatever, and put the peso in relation to that......will be exactly the same result!!!!!

    But please teach more basic mathematics and percentages in school.....it's really 101 to understand the world a bit better!!!!

    • Official Post

    Nowadays it's a case of make it up as you go along and the excuses for price increases are very imaginative:

    The dollar

    Devaluation

    Inflation etc etc

    If one number doesn't work, try another. Besides, not many people use numbers any more, since the three mentioned above cover a multitude of sins and you then have to ask yourself: how long has it been like this?

    Seemingly forever.

    yes, as serafina mentioned regarding PowerPoint presentations, u can make them look like u want them to look!

    But seriously a minimum of respect u need to have towards the one u present with some informative information.......that very often totally lack!

    It's not always done in bad intention, many news media present numbers, but without any relation to other things......like I say with numbers of infected people.... obviously a barrio 10 times bigger could have more cases than a smaller one......and so on. It's really misleading! (Without bad intention but because of stupidity or ignorance). So at the end u also propagate stupidity to people.

    Quote from Splinter

    Nowadays it's a case of make it up as you go along and the excuses for price increases are very imaginative:

    The dollar

    Devaluation

    Inflation etc etc

    These excuses can be humorous as well as frustrating. A couple of years ago, I posted an account of a visit to a verdulería that wasn’t my normal one. No prices posted. When asked the price of lettuce, the vendor sized me up and quoted a price twice that of our regular vendor. Asking him why the price was so high, I was astounded to hear the answer “the exchange rate for USD.” Pursuing this line of reasoning, I asked if the lettuce was, then, imported? He said no, that it was grown in Argentina. “So why does the USD exchange rate affect the price?” No reply.


    @JAN , you are so right about the importance of context, relative size, etc. This is why a country’s boasting about their small number of cases/deaths is meaningless unless they have conducted a significant number of tests, per capita.


    Upon first glance, Argentina has an admirably small number of cases: 452.4 cases per million population (deaths: only 31.6 per million population). But how many people have been actually tested? Only 1456 per million population. What more could we learn if 75% of the population had been tested? Or half? Or 10%?

    • Official Post
    Quote from Rice

    Upon first glance, Argentina has an admirably small number of cases: 452.4 cases per million population (deaths: only 31.6 per million population). But how many people have been actually tested? Only 1456 per million population. What more could we learn if 75% of the population had been tested? Or half? Or 10%?

    This morning I was checking the official bulletin of the Health Ministry and they have started to include also the number of tests made. Now, with 'tests' I think they include the rapid test kits received from China, which check for antibodies and are not very accurate, but still.


    The number until this morning was 65,813 tests, corresponding to 1450.4 sample per million people.

    serafina .......

    Yep, and thats still less in comparison to other countries......even Ecuador has 3 times more tests done per million.....and all top contenders on the billboard have tested 10-20 times more people......

    No "civilized" first world country has done anything as little as Argentina.....

    But ranting over other countries is easy here in the news......

    Rice, only partly true.....

    Already now u can see the virus "likes" particular things more than others......

    What happens in Sweden could have had totally other outcome some where else....

    today alby signed the deal of "barril criollo" which guaratees a minimum price of oil to be 45 USD!!!! In case nobody in the world know how to solve the problem of to low oil prices, learn from Argentina!!!

    yesterday I saw a long program about tachyons, hypothetical particles that can travel faster than light...... Einstein already dealt with the idea! If you would have tachyons, a time machine would be a piece of cake to construct! The term and the idea is used in theory to try to describe other phenomenons, they do not exist!!!!!! Argentina is surely a country that is doing a lot of research in this area!!!!!

    While writing this message, a huge truck with new trucks and camions just cracked in to the tunnel underneath acceso Norte....there was missing a few mm or cm to pass underneath.....guess they will need new paint on the top of them!!!

    Btw, this is so easy to prevent.....U let out air in the tires and gain those mm or cm missing..... afterwards u re inflate.....!!!

    • Official Post
    Quote from JAN

    yesterday I saw a long program about tachyons, hypothetical particles that can travel faster than light...... Einstein already dealt with the idea! If you would have tachyons, a time machine would be a piece of cake to construct! The term and the idea is used in theory to try to describe other phenomenons, they do not exist!!!!!! Argentina is surely a country that is doing a lot of research in this area!!!!!

    While writing this message, a huge truck with new trucks and camions just cracked in to the tunnel underneath acceso Norte....there was missing a few mm or cm to pass underneath.....guess they will need new paint on the top of them!!!

    Btw, this is so easy to prevent.....U let out air in the tires and gain those mm or cm missing..... afterwards u re inflate.....!!!

    @JAN You have too much time on your hands!

    :rimg: