Morons taxed by lottery cards

November 6th, 2007

The Manchester Evening News reports that locals with poor math skills have been left confused over new lottery scratchcards. Camelot has withdrawn the cards after players failed to grasp whether or not they had a winning ticket.
In order to win the Cool Cash game, players had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the one displayed on the card. The frequent use of sub-zero temperatures baffled some players, who failed to grasp the concept of comparing negative numbers. The article states:

Tina Farrell, from Levenshulme, called Camelot after failing to win with several cards.
The 23-year-old, who said she had left school without a maths GCSE, said: “On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn’t.
“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.”

Peter Hall, speaking for the Association of Teachers of Mathematics stated: “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,” but conceded “the concept of smaller numbers is something that some people do seem to struggle with”.

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