Brookline, MA: Parking ticket APR 928%. And you thought your VISA was bad. June 21, 2011

The big banks, and in this case the rich Boston burbs, know that we are too weak to unionize; we’re too scattered and separated from one another to fight against their fees.  By charging millions of people a few dollars at a time, they get their fees without causing too big an uproar.  We’re the path of least resistance between the big corporations and our money that they want for themselves, and the robbery will continue until the wrong person gets charged an amount that finally tips the pissed-off-meter.  When will that be?  I’m already pissed off and am waiting for you.

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Cambridge, Massachusetts charges an APR of 373.00% on unpaid parking tickets and Brookline an APR of 928.00%.  And you thought your credit card was bad.

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I was distracted, sure.  But I’m aware now.  In September, 2010, en expired meter parking ticket for $25 landed on my dashboard in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA.  It was annoying, but I gladly accepted my car’s fate.  For hours I had been working with Harvard’s Committee for the Use of Human Subjects Director to iron out the kinks in my thesis proposal’s CUHS application.  By the time I got out of the meeting, I had renewed faith that my thesis would be possible and paying a $25 ticket felt worth it.  Plus, I knew I did wrong.

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In November, 2010, I got a parking ticket just over the Boston border in Brookline.  There were no “no parking” signs, and other people were parked in front and behind me.  I know the “other people are doing it” excuse is not right, still, the few days before I hadn’t gotten a ticket, but this day I had.  That hardly felt consistent or necessary.  This ticket was for $30.

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By November 2010, I had one $25 ticket and one $30 ticket.  I swear I paid the Cambridge one, but for the sake of argument – Cambridge’s argument – let’s say that I didn’t.  So I had $55 total in parking tickets. 

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By calling Brookline and explaining that there was no “no parking” sign, my ticket was decreased to $10 and a firm warning that “All Brookline streets have a parking ban and it’s clearly stated on the Welcome to Brookline sign”.  I explained to deaf ears that there was no welcome sign.  She didn’t care.  In any case, my ticket was now $10.  I didn’t pay it on principle.  There was no sign.

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Fast forward to yesterday, June 20, 2011, and things had drastically changed.  My tickets had drastically changed.

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Cambridge:                                        Brookline:

September 2010: $25                                     November 2010: $10

June 2011: $95                                               June 2011: $70

Percent increase: 280%                             Percent increase: 600%

Annual % rate (APR): 373.00%                Annual % rate (APR): 928.00%

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You’re reading those numbers right.  I didn’t forget to divide or move the decimal.  On parking tickets in Cambridge, Massachusetts, they are charging an APR of 373% and in Brookline, Massachusetts, they are charging an APR of 928%. 

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After cycling through anger, despair, frustration, nausea, I finally decided that my sanity is worth more than my money and I paid these two tickets.  There is no regulation on this type of behavior and it will keep going on until the right person gets hit or people finally decide they have the right to stand up for themselves.  It’s not right.  Typing this makes me angry.  It is not our fault that we are in a recession.  Moreover, I know this post will do nothing.  It needs to stop.

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The Math of the MA State Lottery: Fishy Probability April 26, 2011

The probability of losing on 30 scratch tickets in a row is 1/192,307.  My friend is the luckiest unlucky person ever.

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My brother witnessed me scratch my first ticket.  Though the mechanism of scratching is hardly difficult, I managed to mess up one part of the code by uncovering the prizes for all of my numbers.  When my brother looked over and saw “1 MIL”… well, let’s just say we were both a bit disappointed.  That ticket was my first contribution to Massachusetts’s secret underground revenue stream where there are no checks and balances, just tickets.  Everyone wonders where their tax dollars go and, when we take home just 2/3 of the amount we’re told we make, why our cars still get swallowed by pot holes into the summer.  That being said, public schools are worth every penny I pay in taxes.  But taxes aside, what happens to lottery money?  Is there any system in place to assure that the odds printed on the backs of tickets are accurate? 

 

For my friend’s 30^th birthday, I bought her 30 $1 scratch tickets with the idea she’d win something.  Anything.  The thought barely crossed my mind that all 30 of those tickets would end up in Monday’s recycling pile.  So what did she win?  Nothing.  Clearly printed on the front of each of these 30 tickets was the probability that “one in three is a winner”.  Based on this ratio, she should have won 10 times on 30 tickets.  OK, so maybe probability doesn’t always mirror real life, but can a girl get a win?  When I posed this question to the math blogger Josh Rappaport of mathchat, he gave the following response:

 

Hi ZS, assuming that whether or not one wins or loses on one scratch ticket (what is that, anyhow?) is independent from winning or losing on any other scratch ticket, you treat each event as an independent event. Laws of probability tell us to multiply the various probabilities of independent events. It appears that the probability of [losing] on any particular scratch ticket must be 2/3. So then the probability of [losing] on 30 scratch tickets in a row (if that is what your problem is asking) must be (2/3)^30 = approximately 5.2 x 10^–6, which is about .0000052, or 52 out of 10 million, which boils down to 1 chance out of 192,307.

 

The chance of my friend losing on all 30 tickets, like she did, was 1 in 192,307.  If 192,307 people all got 30 scratch tickets each, just one – my friend – would lose on all 30.  Something seems a bit off in the Massachusetts State lottery.

 

My thoughts here are that scratching a ticket is not truly an independent event, though there are so many tickets printed that it might as well be.  If we were to work this as a dependent probability problem, we’d have to know how many tickets are printed.  So how many are actually printed?  It strikes me as suspicious that the only people who know this figure are the very same people who are in charge of dolling out – or, more accurately, not doling out – the prize money.

 

A lot of people spend more on scratchies than they do on food.  I am not one of them.  The price I spend on food every couple weeks is comfortably higher than the cost of all the scratch tickets I have ever bought.  Still, I sometimes like to test my luck.  At the time of my first ticket, I was living in Southie.  For anyone who knows the area, my apartment was, not unlike many apartments in this area east of downtown, sandwiched between a convenience store and a liquor store, both of which sold scratchies.  Spent tickets littered the streets.  Spent people littered the streets.  It truly was an avenue of broken dreams.  Still, I’d win sometimes.  The $100 I once won somehow felt much more than 1/8 of my rent at the time and I vowed to keep the five crisp $20 bills in a secret place in my apartment.  They were all gone next grocery day. 

 

Buying a scratch ticket now and again is OK for a person who has a steady job, is paid decent money and has been educated on the dangers of gambling by parents who do not gamble.  Scratch tickets comprised a small sliver of my budgeted entertainment money and everyone needs a good adrenaline rush now and again.  But what about my neighbors in Southie, waiting for the bus frantically scratching tickets?  Who is going to stop them from falling into this trap?

 

Moreover, what if the game changes?  Of course there is no real way of verifying my claim, but scratch tickets aren’t paying out like they did five years ago.  Whereas I would win every once in a while, I have not won on a ticket in enough time to make me feel something is wrong.  My rational mind does not conclude that I am unlucky, it tells me there’s something fishy in Denmark.  More specifically, there’s something rank in the Massachusetts State lottery; they changed the rules mid-game and are back ally robbing the Massachusetts working class.

 

The last ticket I scratched – a sleek black $5 number – directed me to a website to learn its odds.  I have searched online for how many tickets are printed but have come up empty.  What is the probability of winning?  Is anyone overseeing that the Massachusetts State lottery is operating fairly?  Where does all this money go?

 

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contact blog author Shana Donohue: shanadonohue@gmail.com

 

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My experience with Ms. Entitled: Fists up, nation unemployed! January 30, 2011

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Is it still 2011?  Did I travel back in time last night?

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This morning I got an email from a woman who runs a tutoring company here in Massachusetts:

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“Thank you for your interest in L*#$% Tutoring, LLC. Please complete the attached questionnaire so that we may better evaluate whether it would be productive for us to work with you.

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Also, we are concerned about the following comment on your blog ‘Already ill from the thought of rich kids all over the US ‘unschooling’ their kids, I get an email from the tutoring company WyZant from a parent in the South End of Boston who’s looking for help for her 11-year old son….’

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We’re having difficulty with this comment on a few counts:

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We work only with tutors who work exclusively with us. If you would continue working with Wyzant, this would obviate working with us.

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Parents of our students would likely Google you before agreeing to an introductory session with you. Disparaging remarks about “rich kids” would almost certainly put them off.

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If we agreed to go forward with you, would you:

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remove this comment from your blog?
divest yourself of your connections with Wyzant?

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Looking forward to hearing from you,

Ms. 17th Century (ok, not her real name)

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While I’m flattered that she found only one blog post to disagree with (with which to disagree?), that she even bothered to comb through my math blog looking for dirty posts (I’m not that interesting), that she still decided to write even though she thinks I’m trash and that she even bothered to look into my less than sordid, barely-worth-mentioning past at all, I am reminded of what it must have been like for women back in the days of the Victorians, before Women’s Lib, before Snookie came into our world and changed it all.  Moreover, this is Massachusetts.  We’re home to Harvard, the Minutemen, The Boston Tea Party, we’re the one state that didn’t vote for Richard Nixon in the 1969 election.  That last one is why my parents moved here.  People move to Massachusetts to be progressive and to live freely.  Shame on you, Ms. Entitled. 

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I emailed the woman back to tell her that I didn’t think it would be a good fit and that I make no apologies for the content of my blog or working with other people.  Did she think I’d grovel for her part-time, benefit-free $15/hour job?  Wait, would anyone?  It’s amazing what the entitled will feel, well, entitled, to ask you to do.  Relax, don’t do it!  Your dignity will thank you.  

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Fists up, my unemployed brothas and sistas!  Stay strong!  Never apologize for being well-educated, hard-working, motivated, drug-free, wanting healthcare, working with other people or writing a blog entry on how messed up it is to unschool your kids!

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The recession-proof Exam: When will it pop? December 19, 2010

 

The article by Todd Farley “Standardized Testing: The New Wild West” pretty much sums up why high-stakes testing has such a stronghold.  It’s a recession proof industry!  I knew that millions went into it, but I didn’t know the full extent of greed that’s going into it.  Farley himself admits to capitalizing. 

 

But like all bubbles, this one will pop.  Hopefully.  Then maybe our kids can go back to learning again.

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In somewhat related news, here’s a great chart of just how many math topics we throw at our kids each year as opposed to A+ countries where students excel in math…
http://zerosumruler.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/us-vs-a-countries-breadth-vs-depth-in-math-which-is-better/

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