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At Issue In a Massachusetts Town, the Value of Two-Thirds
An anonymous reader writes "In Truro, Massachusetts (a town on Cape Cod), a zoning decision came up for vote, where the results were 136 for, 70 against. The vote required 2/3 approval to pass. The Town Clerk and Town Accountant believe that since .66 * 206 is less than 136, the vote passes. However, an 'anonymous caller' noted that a more accurate value of 2/3 would require 137 (or perhaps even 138 votes) for the measure to be considered passed. The MA Secretary of State and State Attorney General are hard at work to resolve this issue." Updated 20100422 23:55 by timothy: Oops! This story is a year old (rounding up), which I didn't spot quickly enough. Hope they've got it all worked out in the meantime.
Did the Town Clerk and Town Accountant ever work for Verizon?
is irrational
Personally I think their real problem is the number of seats they have. They should just drop 2 positions in their next election and this will never come up again.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
um... /. stripped my decimal points...yeah, that's it...
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
where do the cars come in?
As Barbie says, "Math is hard, let's go shopping!"
The 136 people don't include the woman.
The 100% accurate answer is 137 and 1/3.
So this is a midget voting?!?!
how long until
I don't believe in rounding. I truncate. It helps to always win 2/3 majority votes:
2/3 is 0.66666... Truncated to integer = 0
Total voters: 206
To win the vote, we require at least: 206 * 0 = 0
Therefore any number of affirmative votes constitutes a 2/3 majority.
Numbers don't lie!
Close, but no cigar.
(206 * 2)/3 = 137 1/3
Why use 0.66xxxx whatever, when you don’t have to?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I don't know much about python, but if you're using Integer data types, you're taking the wrong approach... 206 * 2 / 3
This story would be much more interesting if they did use integer division as 2 / 3 * 206. In fact since the law didn't declare the type for number_of_votes, I suggest we fall back to fortran conventions.
We're all missing part of the story. 136 is a 2/3 majority when you're dealing with very large values of 136.
Under my proposed law, during the years between 16 and 21 noninclusive, the probability of being chargeable, upon discovery, with underage drinking shall be determined by interpolation through a truncated logistic function. n'hey.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
can't these people do simple math? 2 / 3 = 0.66666666... 106 / 236 = 0.660194175 Whats the problem here? It didn't pass.
Me and my Pentium beg to differ.My pentium begs to differ.