And now for something completely different

You have entered 131,155 Bills worth $346,299
Bills with hits: 9,205 Total hits: 10,419
Hit rate: 7.02% Slugging Percentage: 7.94% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,268.43
Your rank (based on George Score) is #199
(out of 49,660 current users with a George Score. [99.6 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 19 out of 7,924 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 4,879,028 miles.
They have averaged 474.9 miles per hit and 194.41 days between each hit.

For those of you that think that math has no real-world application, I present to you a case of statistical sampling. Very often, I will enter 100 or more bills at a time. Once in a while, I’ll have entered fewer bills than I should have. This means one of two things: either I was shorted a bill or I missed one.

Since I deal with banks and casinos, I’m dealing with people that are a bit paranoid about money and thus not likely to short me a bill. When I’m missing a bill like that, it means that I’ve skipped over one. You may ask how I can find one missing bill among 100, 200, 300 or more. Do I have to go through each bill?

I used to do that until I realized that I didn’t have to. That’s where statistical sampling comes in. Let’s say that I have 250 bills. I think I’ve entered all of them only to discover that I’ve actually entered 249. I count off 10 bills at a time and check the top bill against the recently entered bills.

The top bill on my pile should be the most recently entered bill. If I count off ten bills, the next should be the eleventh most recently entered. When I find one that doesn’t match, I’ve effectively narrowed it down to a range of ten bills; my missing bill should be in there. (If it’s not, I’ve probably miscounted.)

I know this may well be boring to most, but it is an example of how paying attention in math class can help.

Getting change and entering bills

You have entered 101,324 Bills worth $282,686
Bills with hits: 7,674 Total hits: 8,718
Hit rate: 7.57% Slugging Percentage: 8.60% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,246.83
Your rank (based on George Score) is #246
(out of 52,498 current users with a George Score. [99.5 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 18 out of 7,791 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 4,149,527 miles.
They have averaged 484.0 miles per hit and 192.60 days between each hit.

It looks like the North Miami Publix is also not a good place to get change. I went over there and when I asked someone else for change, someone else called her and said that there were no singles. It could be that they were simply low at the time, but the impression I got was that there weren’t any for me.

I had been there a few days before and they had said at the time that several businesses had asked for change. When asked which business I had worked for, I had mentioned that I used to work for Wolf. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. I wish I had someone else with me so I could have sent them in.

I did eventually get change. Because my computer wasn’t working for a while yesterday, I went over to FIU to see if they had any computers for public use. It turns out that they do, but there are so few that they were all taken. (And this is on a Sunday.) I ended up coming back home. I did find out that the machine where you pay for parking takes $2 bills.

I’m going to have to keep looking for more places to get change. I also want to find new places to enter bills, mostly as a precaution.