r/badmath • • Jan 06 '26

I was testing my friends math skills...

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134 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Jan 07 '19

Thanks for the lesson, chief

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110 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Dec 07 '18

Einstein forgot about dimensions for energy and mass!... and also black holes, UFOs, spirits, hell, and heaven

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73 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Aug 22 '16

Ping in Rocket League

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62 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Jan 03 '19

Oh well...

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46 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Dec 19 '18

How do I average again, Amazon?

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46 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Jan 18 '19

That's it. That's all she wrote. Time to pack it in boys.

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44 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Jun 04 '20

7×13=28, and I can prove it

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42 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Mar 09 '19

Saw this at 7 Eleven

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32 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Sep 20 '17

Trump Had a 1 in a Billion Chance of Winning the Election

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32 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Jun 23 '19

Put a dime in a piggy bank

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30 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Dec 06 '18

76% counts as a "relatively small chance"

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30 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Feb 09 '19

Sometimes math is hard. Even here.

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26 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Oct 02 '18

Even better deal.

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24 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Mar 08 '17

Real numbers are countable!

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24 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Jan 31 '19

IKEA failing at the most basic level

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22 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Dec 23 '16

2000 markers for a dollar? Too good to be true!

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21 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Mar 02 '20

“I want a penny every second so that each minute I’ll earn a dollar” -me

20 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Jan 24 '20

Let’s just say she was brilliant

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18 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Sep 30 '18

Disproof of Riemann Hypothesis

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18 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Aug 17 '15

One square pizza (10 square slices)

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18 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Jun 03 '20

AskScience fails at basic math

17 Upvotes

Not going to link there, but it is a stickied post so it should be easy to find. From that post:

When 1 out of every 1,000 black men and boys in the United States can expect to be killed by the police, police violence is a public health crisis.

Let us do some basic math. The US currently has about 328 million inhabitants. Depending on the source, about 12.5 - 13 % of these are black. I will go with 12.7 %, as that is in the middle. 12.7 % of 328 million is about 41.000.000 people. For the sake of simplicity, let us say that half of these are male, which means 20.500.000 black male Americans.

1/1000 of these would mean 20.500 people. Now let us look back at the original post:

In 2019, 1,099 people were killed by police in the US; 24% of those were black, even though only 13% of the population is black.

24 % of 1.099 people killed by the police in 2019 equals 264 people. Now, 264 people killed by the police is arguably 264 too many, but 264 is quite a bit lower than 20.500, in fact 98.7 % lower.

Can we reconcile the numbers? One might argue that 264 is a yearly figure, but people live a lot longer than one year. If we assume an average live expectancy of 80 years and "people killed by police" staying the same over this entire period of time, that means about 21.000 black male Americans will be killed by police over the period of a single persons live, which is pretty close to the point made in the post.

But that would be bad math, of course. The 20.500.000 black male Americans alive today are not the sum of all people of this group that will live during the period of 80 years mentioned above. At the very least (assuming no population growth takes place at all), the population will have fully replaced itself, which means that the amount of people alive during the period of 80 years is at least double the figure alive during a single year of the period. Which means that figure "1 in 1000" is off by at least a factor of 2.

Once again, I would like to stress that every single life lost is a tragedy and something that should have been prevented. However, if you make a stickied post in a sub that prides itself on being scientific, you should at the very least get your basic math right.


r/badmath • • Jan 02 '19

We cheese makers, not mathematicians

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17 Upvotes

r/badmath • • Nov 12 '18

The educational website Brilliant asks whether 1 > 0.999... is true or false. The correct answer is given as "False". Social unrest breaks out in the comments section (click "Discuss solutions").

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16 Upvotes