# Ever been shocked at what some people don't know? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 10, 2012, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416 "2012-03-10T22:36:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/61 "2012-03-11T09:31:02Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > As an adjunct professor, I teach a number of math courses at a local private college. > > Most of the students do not know their times tables. > > When I write (8)(4) = on the board, I am met with stares. They do not know (8)(4) = 32. They have never memorized their times tables. I have to admit I would have been one of the ones looking blankly. I was unaware of this convention and wouldn’t have know that (8)(4) was supposed to indicate the product of eight and four. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/62 "2012-03-11T09:42:22Z")
> [@chacoguy](#): > > A couple of years ago, I introduced a 60 year old man to Nachos. Yup, corn chips and melted cheese, dipped in salsa. He had never heard of them. I probably ate corn chips and melted cheese before your were born, **Chacoguy** , but only last year did I learn they were called Nachos (I’m not presently living in the US). ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/63 "2012-03-11T09:42:26Z")
I had an older guy say he had a teenage son with valley fever, in a sly tone of voice. 😕I wondered if he meant his son was dating a valley girl(like you know whatever!) or what he meant. Turns out there is a disease called valley fever, which his son had.:smack: ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/64 "2012-03-11T09:55:56Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I was unaware of this convention and wouldn’t have know that (8)(4) was supposed to indicate the product of eight and four. You may be more familiar with it in the more common forms like (1+x)(2-y), or 2(x+y). This is, quite literally, the first time I’ve ever seen it used with single numbers, rather than formulae - so I’d have been staring blankly, too…even once I figured out what was meant, I’d have kept it up for a minute as I tried to figure out why they’d used that notation for the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/65 "2012-03-11T10:02:17Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Maybe I just have supervision, but the world doesn’t turn to 2D if I close one eye. I can even pick up pencils that are the table in front of me. > > I’ve heard the 2D/3D thing a ton of times and the person/article explaining it always uses the “close one eye” example. But there has to be more to it because closing one eye doesn’t hamper the vision in my remaining open eye. Your brain is quite good at generating a 3d image from hints like shadows as well as its own memory of the scene from when your second eye was open. But more information, such as a second eye, generates a better model. For example, it’s definitely easier to track objects in three dimensional space with two eyes. Try catching a batted baseball with an eyepatch over one eye as a test of this idea. ---
**Author:** ![brittekland](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@brittekland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brittekland)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/66 "2012-03-11T10:41:15Z")
A friend who is a VP of a large marketing company with double master’s degree never heard of Dalai Lama… and her husband who’s a head of a large management company and this other friend of ours who were having dinner with us didn’t know what “queue” was. Go figure. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/67 "2012-03-11T11:19:38Z")
I’ve mentioned these on a previous thread. I was in an elevator in a hotel in Niagara Falls. A couple got on, the doors started to close, then opened again. I saw that the man was pushing a button, and every time he pushed it the doors opened up again. His companion tried it, with the same result. Then I noticed that they were pushing the button for the floor we were on. I had to explain to them that they needed to tell the elevator where they were going, not where they were coming from. The woman commented that elevators shouldn’t be so complicated. And then there’s my first-cousin-once-removed, who thinks all dogs are male and all cats are female. The dogs impregnate the cats, and the cats give birth do a mixed litter of puppies and kittens. This woman, by the way, is not five years old; she’s in her 50s. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/68 "2012-03-11T11:29:28Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > And then there’s my first-cousin-once-removed, who thinks all dogs are male and all cats are female. The dogs impregnate the cats, and the cats give birth do a mixed litter of puppies and kittens. This woman, by the way, is not five years old; she’s in her 50s. Ummm… Your 50-ish first-cousin-once-removed might know the [facts of life](http://home.online.no/~rsvensse/catfun12.jpg) better than you think. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/69 "2012-03-11T11:35:04Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > You may be more familiar with it in the more common forms like (1+x)(2-y), or 2(x+y). This is, quite literally, the first time I’ve ever seen it used with single numbers, rather than formulae - so I’d have been staring blankly, too…even once I figured out what was meant, I’d have kept it up for a minute as I tried to figure out why they’d used that notation for the problem. When I learned algebra (1966 or so), we got this. The notation ( )( ) was shown, and a few examples of the (8)(4) sort were shown, but thereafter that usage was NEVER used again that I can remember. It was always like (1+x)(2-y), or 2(x+y) like **Tengu** says. But we did see some (8)(4) sort of examples at the beginning. Then they bushwhack you with notations like f(x). ETA: And then when you get into Calculus, they bushwhack you some more with notations like dy/dx ---
**Author:** ![Blackberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blackberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackberry)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/70 "2012-03-11T12:04:50Z")
A girl about 18 years old in my teen parents childbirth class was pregnant with her second baby and didn’t know what a C-section was. A guy I was casually seeing who was in his early 30s asked me which ones were the Democrats and which ones were the Republicans. He knew who our president was, but I seriously had to tell him that Obama (and I and he and everyone else we might agree with) is a Democrat. Another guy I was seeing (I need to raise my standards, yes) thought people had two sets of baby teeth before getting their adult teeth. He had to call his mom who was a dental assistant before he would believe that we just had one set of baby teeth. > [@Shamozzle](#): > > My Mom felt that the power cord for her laptop should be more than sufficient to connect to the internet. The fact that she had to plug in the ethernet cable was quite ridiculous to her. Oh yeah, my mom thinks the same thing. I’ve tried to explain it to her at least twice, and she still doesn’t get it. She still calls to tell me her Internet isn’t working, even though she plugged in her laptop’s power cord. To be fair, as of a couple years ago, I think she does finally realize that you don’t have to be online to play Windows solitaire. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/71 "2012-03-11T12:10:37Z")
> [@Blackberry](#): > > Oh yeah, my mom thinks the same thing. I’ve tried to explain it to her at least twice, and she still doesn’t get it. She still calls to tell me her Internet isn’t working, even though she plugged in her laptop’s power cord. To be fair, as of a couple years ago, I think she does finally realize that you don’t have to be online to play Windows solitaire. One of my mom’s friends asked me how she could get on the internet without a modem or ISP, she also refused to purchase a wireless adapter to see if she could mooch off someone’s open router. She after much back and forth concluded I was just incompetent at this computer stuff and she would ask around as she was not going to pay for modems or ISPs because she knows there is a way!:smack: ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/72 "2012-03-11T14:50:03Z")
> [@Candyman74](#): > > Yup. He’s the American Fred West, right? > > I have vague knowledge of the murderer. Couldn’t name his victims, though. Can’t name Jack the Ripper’s, either, and at least he was on the same continent as me! Fred West? Close, but Manson had a coterie of mainly females carrying out murders. I can’t name any of the other victims but Sharon Tate was famous in her own right, beng an actress and married to film director Roman Polanski. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/73 "2012-03-11T15:21:53Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > In 1982, on a lark, I bet some friends of mine that we could ask 10 random people at Rogers Park Beach in Chicago if they knew who Archimedes was and not more than 2 would answer correctly. I won. Duh, he’s the owl in The Sword in the Stone. 😃 An actual conversation that played out during a game of Trivial Pursuit: “But snails and slugs are the same species!” “No they’re not.” “Of course they are!” “No, they’re the same class, not species. Think about it… not even all snails are the same species!” “I HAVE A PhD!!!” “In geology. Let’s move on.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/74 "2012-03-11T15:37:15Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > You may be more familiar with it in the more common forms like (1+x)(2-y), or 2(x+y). This is, quite literally, the first time I’ve ever seen it used with single numbers, rather than formulae - so I’d have been staring blankly, too…even once I figured out what was meant, I’d have kept it up for a minute as I tried to figure out why they’d used that notation for the problem. That’s true. I would have recognized it in that case. ---
**Author:** ![saje](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saje/32/3631_2.png) [@saje](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saje)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/75 "2012-03-11T15:43:01Z")
I was shocked to learn that my husband had only the vaguest idea of who Winnie The Pooh and Eeyore are. ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/76 "2012-03-11T16:15:14Z")
> [@saje](#): > > I was shocked to learn that my husband had only the vaguest idea of who Winnie The Pooh and Eeyore are. I only have the vaguest idea of who Winnie The Pooh and Eeyore are. Winnie is a bear, he likes “hunny,” there’s a kangaroo involved. Eeyore is an anteater or something. (Edit : maybe an Aardvark? I get them mixed up.) The human boy is Christopher Robin. Beyond that, I got nothin’. I presume they go on adventures? Male, 38, raised in the USA. Joe ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/77 "2012-03-11T16:19:51Z")
I knew a “technical” guy who wrote date-arithmetic software but didn’t know about the Gregorian calendar. To confirm this I asked “Was 1900 a leap year?” He answered “I don’t know; is 1900 a multiple of 4?” My surprise that he wrote date-arithmetic software without knowing of the Gregorian reform changed to astonishment that he didn’t know multiples of 100 were also multiples of 4. My 3rd-grade teacher insisted that Greenland should be called a continent since it is much larger than Australia (as she demonstrated by pointing to the Mercator-projection map on her wall). > [@panache45](#): > > And then there’s my first-cousin-once-removed, who thinks all dogs are male and all cats are female. The dogs impregnate the cats, and the cats give birth do a mixed litter of puppies and kittens. This woman, by the way, is not five years old; she’s in her 50s. I nominate this one for _Best of Thread._ ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/78 "2012-03-11T16:26:16Z")
I concur with that assessment, although the OPs “why aren’t these eggs hatching” example comes in a close second. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/79 "2012-03-11T16:26:48Z")
While traveling in SE Asia, with a high school teacher, who repeatedly asked me, in earnest, “Will we be taking a train or a bus to Indonesia?” I explained that it was an island nation and we would have to fly or take a boat. By the end of the week I had answered this question, from the same woman, three times! ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Fire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@Silver\_Fire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Fire)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416/80 "2012-03-11T16:44:18Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I didn’t know birds could lay unfertilized eggs. I never thought about it. … chickens? Not that fertilized eggs are NEVER eaten (I know because I just got myself curious and googled a bit about intentionally eating fertilized eggs; the wiki on balut almost made me vomit), most of the eggs you buy in the store for your breakfast are unfertilized. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-dont-know/615416.md?page=5)