What would the daily commute have to be if this guy put 1,000,000 miles on his Honda in 21 years?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500202_162-20126363/million-miles-and-counting-for-a-honda-accord/
130.47 miles per day. Seriously, that took about 4 seconds with a calculator.
That’s not accounting for leap years though, now that I think about it.
I think working leap years into the equation brings the average down by about a 10th of a mile per day.
Wow, that sucks that the poor guy had to work 365 days a year!
If you figure the guy isn’t a horrible workaholic, you can guess 50 weeks of driving per year (most folks get a couple of weeks of vacation) and driving 5 days a week, or 250 days of driving per year. Over 21 years, that’s 5,250 days of driving.
1,000,000 miles divided by 5,250 days is 190 miles per day, or a commute of 95 miles each way (divide daily total by 2).
The question in the OP was 'What would the daily commute have to be if this guy put 1,000,000 miles on his Honda in 21 years?" It didn’t mention anything about only having to drive to work and back.
I’ll admit to not having read the article though so if the question was asked differently in there, I missed it.
People get public holidays and sick days too, so I’d bump that down to more like 46 weeks.
I don’t know if this guy is still doing it. 372 miles a day. Article from 2006.
Could I ask how it’s possible that anyone **can’t **do the math?
Wouldn’t a 1990 model year be made/sold in 1989? Or did they not do that back then?
They have been doing that for as long as I can remember so we can add an extra year.
Good question. Also, can anyone explain the math in this sentence from the linked article, “Owner Joe LoCicero told co-anchor Chris Wragge on ‘The Early Show’ that he has to do a lot of maintenance to keep the 15-year-old car running – so much that his wife sometimes gets jealous of his relationship to the vehicle.”
It’s probably the same guy who was featured in a story from a few years ago. IIRC, he’s a guy who drives routes for companies to determine their actual mileage and how long it takes to drive that route. Ergo, he spends a LOT of time in the car, and this happened to be the car he used.
After reading a bit further, it’s not the same guy. The guy I read about is here. He had to replace the odometer after ~680,000 miles or so. This new guy is a claims adjuster in Maine. Amazing that his car is still going, considering the rust issues you’d think he’d have encountered in ME.
It varies somewhat from manufacturer to manufacturer, and model to model. But, typically, the 1990 model would have been introduced sometime during 1989, and sold through sometime in 1990, when the 1991 model would have been introduced. (Even then, a dealer might have had some new 1990 cars on the lot for some months after the 1991 models were introduced, though that’s less likely for a popular car like the Accord.)
I’d love to see a full accounting of maintenance and repairs. How many engines and rebuilds for example? Most vehicles can be maintained indefinitely if you are willing to spend enough to repair everything. And if you decide you are in it for the long haul, keeping up with maintenance can result in a very reasonable cost per mile. It helps greatly to start with a popular vehicle with lots of parts in the field and knowledgeable mechanics.
Mathematics Learning Disabilities, which encompass weaknesses in calculation and reasoning, are estimated to occur in 3 to 6 percent of children, or 6 to 13.8 percent, depending on the age of the student and the formula used to defined math LD.
Developmental dyscalculia: prevalence and prognosis.
Shalev RS, Auerbach J, Manor O, Gross-Tsur V
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2000;9 Suppl 2:II58.
The specific disorder of arithmetic skills. Prevalence studies in a rural and an urban population sample and their clinico-neuropsychological validation.
Hein J, Bzufka MW, Neumärker KJ
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2000;9 Suppl 2:II87.
Math learning disorder: incidence in a population-based birth cohort, 1976-82, Rochester, Minn.
Barbaresi WJ, Katusic SK, Colligan RC, Weaver AL, Jacobsen SJ
Ambul Pediatr. 2005;5(5):281.
But doesn’t there come a certain point in time when the cost to repair is greater than the cost to purchase a new vehicle? If that wasn’t true, wouldn’t we all be driving our 1928 Ford Model Ts and working on them every Saturday?
Eventually it becomes a point of pride for the owner. My boss has a Geo Metro that is nearly twenty years old. It’s one of the few still driving. I think it has over 350k miles on it. There are a few fan sites out there and to his knowledge his has the second most mileage of any one ever made. He won’t get rid of it until he has the most.
Qadgop mentions (just above) some stats for math learning disability. Far beyond that, it is certainly a much-discussed controversy (for umpty-ump years) that children just isn’t learning, with much debate over good and bad ways to teach math, and all that other education debate.
The point: I think it’s fact that a whole lot of people have real (let alone imaginary, complex, vector, and matrix) math insufficiencies. (My personal cred: I have A.S. degree in math, and did math tutoring at the college. I saw these things!)
So how can Exapno even ask how it’s possible that anyone can’t do the math? Answer: He, and the rest of us, are spending way too much time among better-educated company, right here at SDMB, where most of us can do the math! 
(Addendum, on second reading: That sounds like I’m suggesting that the rest of us are smarter than Exapno. No, that isn’t what I’m saying or writing or even thinking.)
True, but daily commute is often used to refer to the work commute. In fact, I don’t know anyone who refers to their recreational driving as a commute.