Basic Math Tricked Thousands of People: The Powerball Equation

With over 1.2 million shares and over 730,000 likes on Facebook in less than 20 hours, this image shows how horrible tens of thousands of people are at math. Surely many thousands of those likes and shares are from people who realized the basic problem.

Let’s run through the basic mathematical equation:

1,300,000,000 / 300,000,000 = ?

The answer is 4.33… Yet somehow many people saw this image and believed the calculations. How large would the Powerball need to be to give 300 million people each $4.33 million?

$1.29 Quintillion

It is hard to fathom that many people were tricked by simple arithmetic. Does this say something more about the people themselves or the education system that taught them basic arithmetic?

Fortunately, there exists an invention that can calculate equations such as 1.3 trillion divided by 300 million, and $4.33 is enough to buy 300 million people one of them.

No wonder so many’s finances are in shambles.