This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this PLEASE.
The capital letters, anonymous executive and company name-dropping make my bullshit counter begin to click and pop.
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.14, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace...not sellers.
Unfortunately, though, buyers don't control how much oil is left in the ground. As such, the law of supply and demand must bring up the price of petroleum and its slick rainbow of distillates.
I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us s end it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) .. and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!
This is basically the logic behind the pyramid scheme. The bullshit counter has pegged.
If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am. So trust me on this one.
By the geometric series formula
, we have 33,333,330 people for the sixth iteration (not ~300 million as the chain letter author claims).However, even that is a hopelessly ideal figure. It assumes that each recipient is unique, i.e., no one gets the same letter twice. The summation the author uses also assumes that everyone who receives the letter propagates it. Gullible as I am, I played into the author's hands by bringing it up here. Shame on me. (But no one will see it of course, so moot point.)
I'm not even much of a mathematician as of now, but I'm still a hell of a lot better than whoever first spawned this junk. The arrogance of the author is screaming through my head.
Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am. So trust me on this one
Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am. So trust me on this one
Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am. So trust me on this one
Maybe this guy is an agent for McNeil Consumer Healthcare because I need a damn ibuprofen right now.
This is why comprehensive math education should be mandatory in high schools. Wouldn't want anyone pulling the wool over on you.
I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did
you! Acting together we can make a difference.If this makes sense to
you, please pass this message on THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO BELOW THE $1.00
RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.
"Acting together ... we can make a difference!" I've never felt so inspired before! Imagine, someone took precious time out of his day to write a chain letter urging everyone not only to indulge in wasteful, short-sighted habits but also to demand that these destructive habits be made as cheap as possible.
It brought a tear to my eye.
3 comments:
Hahaha.
and yeah, I read this.
Now I'm afraid of writing to you.
oh well, it's interesting how you actually stopped to think and write about this; and actually corrected the author on the math. I agree that he was too positive (or naive) considering that no one would get the message more than once and that everyone would foward it, but if it happened like so, would he be really wrong in the math? :S
I feel like all my time spent in middle school was in vain.
Well, even if everything went according to his plan, the figure he gave (300 million) would be about ten times more than the actual number at that point.
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