Friday, July 30, 2010
Week 8 - 3 of 3
Another concept I found interesting and useful from Chapter 13 was apples and oranges. This is a numerical comparison where it doesn't make sense to compare the items. I see people use such comparisons all the time. And I think to myself, "what the heck are you thinking?!" For example: Grace has the biggest crush on Josh. She has found out that his favorite color is blue. The dance is next week and she really wants to impress him. She thinks that by wearing blue all this week and next she will have a 52.67% chance of getting asked to the dance by Josh. This makes no sense to compare. Even though she might be wearing blue the entire time does not mean Josh will ask Grace to the dance (Even though I probably would have done something like that back in high school). Apples and oranges is used a lot of times to make something practically impossible sound reasonable. This is a great concept to know when arguing and when to tell whether a comparison with numbers, particularly percents, is true, valid, or just nonsense.
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I just had to comment on your blog because I thought your example was funny! Honestly I would have never thought about relating a girl wanting to go to dance with someone, and his favorite color. That really is an apple and orange example. Really makes no sense to compare the two things at all, but when it comes to down to it, people always try. They try to relate an apple to an orange and surface wise, it’s evident that the two things are clearly different. Like so what if she was wearing blue? Would that make josh want to go to the dance with her? It’s pretty irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteHey, I enjoyed reading your post because the example you used for apples and oranges was very funny! Even though the girl is wearing her crush's favorite color to the dance, it doesn't mean that he will notice her and ask her to dance with him. He might not even know her at all and there may be other people wearing blue too. There are many other possibilites so that doesn't make any sense at all. To be honest, I would've done the same thing if I knew my crush's favorite color but that is rather nonsense.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of having a bit of trouble understanding apples and apples but thanks to your post, it helped clear things up a lot.