While standing in line at the cafeteria today, I overheard a conversation which can only be described as utterly horrific. It was only after I’d taken a break from laughing at someone else’s expense (no, I’m not proud of it but I’m also not sorry about it) that the entire meaning of the situation hit me. The reality of it transformed from a bit of humor to an intellectual train wreck in less time that it would take to heat a pizza.

The pizza shop inside the food court was having a sale. Each pizza, no matter the size, was $5. Some of you are alreading working out the disparity of this, but don’t allow yourself to get drawn in just yet. The person in front of me was carefully examining his options, and trying ascertain which selection would yeild the optimum result for both wallet and stomach. After a few seconds thought, he stopped to ask the woman behind the counter for assistance.

“How many slices are in a large pizza?” came the question. “8.” came the reply from the woman. “I don’t think I’m hungry enough for 8 slices. How many slices are in the medium?” Came the man’s second volley.

Now at this point any followup to the conversation here is simply drivel and as much as I’d like to be able to recount it for you, I cannot. I was so lost in laughing to myself that I do not remember anything else of his conversation with the woman behind the counter. Everyone is guilty of saying something stupid at some point, and perhaps the man was hungry enough that his mind simply wasn’t functioning properly. Either way, I was leaving the lunch table with a bit of humor to take back to the office.

Upon returning to work, I relayed this bit of flawed mathmatics to one of the other engineers I work with. Instead of being rewarded for returning with this treat of higher order humor, I was again the victim of a blank stare. It was only once I’d explained the flawed understanding of quantity of pizza vs slice that my otherwise intelligent co-worker began to see the humor and laugh. He went on to tell others in the office of the lunchtime incident, and he too was greeted with blank stare after stare until it was explained in detail, to every. last. person.

Can our understanding of math really be this bad? Can our comprehension of a plate full of food really be led astray simply because we section it along the diameter a few times? I work in an office peopled entirely with well educated, technically oriented people who have to deal with various statistics and numbered sets on a daily basis, and yet as the joke spread to each person, another charred hunk grey matter was added to the tally of this mind numbing train wreck.