I blame the public schools

Preparing for my upcoming Canada trip, I initiated an online chat with a Sprint rep to find out the roaming voice and data rates. Sending an average-length email would, according to the agent, cost somewhere between a few cents and a few hundred dollars. Transcript below the jump.

Read the transcript

Me: Hi, I will be going to Canada this week, and wanted to know what the voice and data rates are with and without the Canada package.

Lakisha: Hi, my name is Lakisha. Thank you for your chat request. Please wait while I review your information.

Lakisha: I will be more than happy to assist you today.

Lakisha: While roaming in Canada with your Sprint device all calls will be billed $0.59/minute, data service is $0.002/KB. Sprint does offer a Canada Roaming plan for $2.99 per month; this plan reduces the voice rate to only $0.20/minute.

Me: But not the data?

Lakisha: Correct.

Me: And data is 2/10 of one cent per KB, is that right?

Lakisha: Data is $2.00 per kb.

Me: $0.002/KB is very different from $2.00/kb - could you please confirm the rate

Lakisha: $0.002/KB is the same as $2 per kb

Me: $0.002 is 2/1000th, right? Which is very different from 2.

Lakisha: The data rate if you were to use it will be $2 per kb.

Me: Above, you wrote $0.002/KB.

Lakisha: Which is the same.

Me: You're kidding, right? So, a 5KB email is $100 or 10 cents?

Lakisha: It will not be 10 cents because you will pay $2 per kb.

Me: Can you please review the transcript above. The first thing you said is $0.002/KB.

Lakisha: I do understand

Lakisha: The data rate within Canada will be $0.002kb which is compatible to $2 per kb.

Lakisha: Would you be activating the Canada reduce rate plan today?

Me: 1 cent = $0.01 ! There's a difference between using 1000KB and being billed $2 and $2000

Lakisha: You can always call our toll number which is 8882267212

Lakisha: Thanks again for choosing Sprint Worldwide chat. Have a great day.

Lakisha: has disconnected.

So, $1=$0.001 (=1/10 of one cent), and 1 kb = 1 kilobit = 1 KB = 1 kilobyte (=8 kilobits). Using Lakisha's "is compatible to" operator (you'll learn about it in higher-level math classes), a 5 KB email costs 1 cent, which is compatible to $80.

Before you go mocking Sprint, note Verizon isn't much better.

This post cannot be proven true

Randall Munroe has a solution to Gödel's incompleteness theorem, and to self-referential puzzlement in general.

First, John von Neumann's profound take on Gödel's result:

It was a very serious conceptual crisis, dealing with rigor and the proper way to carry out a correct mathematical proof. In view of the earlier notions of the absolute rigor of mathematics, it is surprising that such a thing could have happened, and even more surprising that it could have happened in these latter days when miracles are not supposed to take place. Yet it did happen.

And Randall's slightly more pithy (but no less profound) version:

See the rest