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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.
Two thirds of this is approx 137.3. The vote must be greater than or equal to 137.3 to pass, than means 138 is required, unless you have fractional people.
Significant figures are important. In this case, the 2/3rds rule, being a constant, MUST be taken to at least 3 digits.
Uh.. how about not expressing an infinitely repeating number as a finite value?
(206 * 2) / 3 = 137.33~ = 138 votes to meet the minimum
Not that hard. Significant digits don't come into play. The value of two thirds is 2/3, not some decimal value.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
137 votes does not give you 2/3rds. It is less than 2/3rds. If the law requires 2/3rds, in what situation would 137/206 be sufficient?
Put it this way - put the equation into C++ and compile and see how it comes out.
if( 137/206 >= 2/3 )
votepass;
You need 138 for that equation to be true.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
Further, 137/206 is still less than 2/3. So they in fact needed 138 to pass. This is why I tell my students to never use decimal approximations; simply use the exact number.
Date on the article is April 30th, 2009.
So, does anyone know if basic math skills prevailed?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Put it this way - put the equation into C++ and compile and see how it comes out. if( 137/206 >= 2/3 ) votepass;
Nope. That will always evaluate true. (You're invoking integral division, not real numbers.) You wanted:
if (137.0 / 206.0 >= 2.0/3.0 ) votepass;
I just did it myself in Python and it is a rounding issue:
206/3*2 = 136
206./3*2 = 137.333333333334
If you round the division down then do the multiplication, you get 136.
pft, clearly you've been taught wrong. 2/3 is really .666666. Duh.
You're both wrong, 2/3 is two divided by three. To make 2/3 of any number, you multiply it by two and divide it by three. It's not hard, and no decimal will ever be as accurate.
The 100% accurate answer is 137 and 1/3.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
From:
http://www.tnrta.org/docs/TNRTA-nwsltr-Fall09.pdf
No. A majority vote requires 50% + epsilon to pass. However, a 2/3 vote typically requires that the majority must have at least twice as many as the minority, not "more than twice as many". Which is to say, if there are three people voting, only two voting yea passes the bill, not three.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Y'all screwed up.
2/3 majority in parliamentary procedure is taken as meaning there are at least twice as many votes for than against. That avoids the whole fractional vote issue, which is a nonsensical concept.
In this case there were 70 against, which means there would have to be at least 140 for. Thus the motion fails.
C'mon, people. This thing has to have happened more than a few times in the course of history.
Fucking duh, Massachusetts.
One feels obliged to note that because massachussetts is one of the only states in the world that has ANY practicing actual democracies (the federal government is a republic) . . . the state usually doesn't interfere in this sort of thing. Welcome to town government by the people. Usually it works better than this, but, actually, often it doesn't.