{"id":185,"date":"2011-01-08T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-08T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/?p=185"},"modified":"2011-01-04T14:27:34","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T19:27:34","slug":"helping-a-little-old-rich-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/2011\/01\/08\/helping-a-little-old-rich-lady\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping a little, old (rich) lady"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One day, on the drive home from work, I witnessed an elderly lady in battered clothes struggling. Her wheelie basket, piled with laundry, had gotten stuck. In an unexpected and unprecendented pang of empathy, I stopped and offered assistance. Delighted to have me after, apparently, struggling for some time I was quickly able to pop the stuck wheel out of its prison (the sewer grate).<\/p>\n<p>Preparing to leave, she stops me. &#8220;Before you leave, I have a reward to offer!&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>She has my attention now. &#8220;I can give you 1,000,000 dollars or I can give you thirty daily payments starting today of one penny. I shall double each subsequent payment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To be kind, I offer the &#8220;lower&#8221; payment of a penny. I don&#8217;t need any old ladies millions of dollars. She gives me a penny and departs.<\/p>\n<p>Sitting back in my office, I stop and think about what I&#8217;ve done. I realize that each day she pays me (for all thirty of them) I can expect <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s0.wp.com\/latex.php?latex=2%5E%7Bday-1%7D&#038;bg=ffffff&#038;fg=000&#038;s=0&#038;c=20201002\" alt=\"2^{day-1}\" class=\"latex\" \/> cents. Considering it further, I begin to understand that the miracle of a doubling scheme such as this is that every subsequent day I will receive exactly one more cent than all the previous days <em>combined<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>A few weeks later, it now takes a rather large dump truck to deliver the little copper coins. Wondering how many dollars this all amounts to I quickly scribble on a pad of paper: <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s0.wp.com\/latex.php?latex=%5Cfrac%7B2%5E%7B30%7D%7D%7B100%7D+%3D+%5C%2410%2C737%2C418&#038;bg=ffffff&#038;fg=000&#038;s=0&#038;c=20201002\" alt=\"&#92;frac{2^{30}}{100} = &#92;$10,737,418\" class=\"latex\" \/>. <\/p>\n<p>Just something to remember when you see an elderly lady in need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One day, on the drive home from work, I witnessed an elderly lady in battered clothes struggling. Her wheelie basket, piled with laundry, had gotten stuck. In an unexpected and unprecendented pang of empathy, I stopped and offered assistance. Delighted to have me after, apparently, struggling for some time I was quickly able to pop &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/2011\/01\/08\/helping-a-little-old-rich-lady\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Helping a little, old (rich) lady&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4057],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maths","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p16T7G-2Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}