Thirty Miles
If you travel ten miles left when you should have gone ten miles right, you’ve made a thirty-mile mistake: the ten miles you went in the wrong direction, the ten miles you have to go back to get to where you started from, and then the ten miles you have to go to get to where you were going. It explains why you’ve got to call “time out,” now, and determine where you are. Is the direction you are headed with your life in fact the way you want to go?
— Phil McGraw, Ph.D., Self Matters
Denise writes:
Eh?
Dr. Phil seems to be displaying some innumeracy here. That’s a 20 mile mistake. The 10 miles in the opposite direction, and the 10 miles to get back to the starting point. 10+10=20. If “the ten miles you have to go to get to where you were going” is a mistake after you’ve gone the wrong way, well, then it would likely have been a mistake before you made the wrong turn too.
Also, he’s assuming that your mistakes in direction lead you 180° opposite to your desired destination.
If you head 10 miles north when you meant to go 10 miles west, you don’t need to head 10 miles south then 10 miles west. You can go a bit less than 15 miles southwest and get to where you wanted to go.
Fuzzy math. It scares the mathphobes and makes them think you are Really Smart. And it makes the non-mathphobes wonder if you should be allowed to balance your checkbook on your own.
James writes:
I disagree. (not that I am a fan of Dr. Phil by any means).
I’m also assuming opposite directions, not North and West because we know that would not be “the opposite direction”, as in an opposite direction in life.
But think about it – 10 miles East in the wrong way, then you have to come back those ten miles – that’s 20 miles alone and you are back at the starting point. THEN, you go the 10 miles you were supposed to go originally (West), that is a total of 30 miles. But hold on – IF you had made the correct turn in the first place, you would have gone ANOTHER 10 miles in the time it took you to “come back” – that makes a 40 mile mistake.