Trump acknowledged having boasted that his efforts to lower drug prices had reduced what consumers pay by “500%, 600%.” But he added, “We also sometimes say 50%, 60%” and called it a “different kind of calculation” that could go up to “70, 80 and 90%.” “People understand that better,” Trump said. “But they’re two ways of calculating” and “either way, it doesn’t make any difference.”
Donald Trump quoted in a report by Will Wissert in AP News. ‘Two ways of calculating': Trump defends his mathematically impossible calculations on drug prices
Sometimes I'm mortified by my innumeracy.
Years ago I was a delivery driver for a small wholesale grocer. I would often buy products from other vendors to deliver to our customers. Generally the boss would have already have accounted for the price on the receipt. But for some reason when I would buy from restaurant fixture suppliers I needed to do a standard markup.
So for example, if I knew the price I paid was 40% discount, I needed to make a calculation in order to make the price 100%. And to my great embarrassment I did not know how to do the math.
It's quite easy, just divide the known price by .6. But I improvised a wrong answer. It turns out that what is mathematically correct actually does make a difference.
