Louis, I'm not sure what you mean by "square number" (but obviously not
n^2). Do you mean a "round number", such as $1.50 or $2.00?
In that case, no. Often prices are quoted to end in $xxx.95 or $xxx.99,
supposedly making them smaller. "Less than $10; only $9.99." Our gas
pumps quote prices to the nearest millidollar even though we have no
coin for that: "$1.239 per gallon" (often with the "9" in a smaller
size. Of course there is no significant difference between $9.99 and
$10.00, but the merchants claim that the psychological effect is large;
here there is an added benefit by having a 3-digit price versus a
4-digit price. And one would think that people would mentally treat the
gas price above as $1.24 per gallon but I usually here them say it as
$1.23 per gallon, dropping the $0.009 rather than rounding up.
Tax of course adds it's own effects of "un-rounding" prices, though
often kiosks will sell something at, say, $0.94 so that the 6 % sales
tax (here in Charleston) makes the price an even dollar, or at least
ending in a "5" or a "0". Cashiers no longer count change up from the
purchase to the tendered cash; if at all, they count out the amount of
change that the machine calculated. Customers rarely count their
change; perhaps many cannot.
I kind of liked Italy. When I was there in the late 70s, vendors would
use postcards, gum, candy, and "getoni's" (spelling?; these are phone
tokens) to make change due to a lack of sufficient coinage.
Jim
On Monday 26 March 2001 0025, Louis JOURDAN wrote:
....
> But is it not the same situation in the US ? Many items are priced at
> square number before sales tax, but what you actually have to pay is
> often with 2 decimals and you need or get a number of 1 or 2 cents
> coins. Am I right ?
>
> Louis
--
James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston
10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street
843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424
http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
