Math illiteracy makes most people miss the most important parts of the news...

I’m not one to rant on and on about the missteps of today’s professional athletes* but a random number thrown out in a story about Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones caught my eye last night. The story is about all the legal trouble he’s been in since joining the NFL as a rookie, including the latest “adventure”: being questioned be police about a shooting at a Las Vegas strip club during the NBA’s All-Star weekend.

According to the story, police seized $81,000 “in dollar bills they believed Jones has brought to the club”.

EIGHTY-ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS, PEOPLE!

Let’s do the math. If he had dropped a dollar every second on the “entertainment” it would still have taken over 22 hours to spend that much cash. In fact, in order to spend that much in a reasonable amount of time he’d have to spend anywhere from $3 per second on up to blow through that much cash**.

One wonders if this was perhaps some sort of bet he had placed with a buddy. Sort of like “Brewster’s Millions” but with strippers and cocaine…which, yes, would be a completely different movie.

* After all, that is what AM talk radio is for.
** $3 per second could be spent in about eight hours, to do it in three hours would require spending about $7.50 every second.

Comments

Unknown said…
Not to mention the ordeal bringing 81,000 singles into the club must have been. Even if they were crisp, uncirculated dollars still bound from the bank, you'd need at least a couple suitcases. When I imagine it though, they carried the cash in giant canvas duffle bags thrown over their shoulders.