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Basics of Numbers Videos 8 videos
The precise placement of a decimal point can be the difference between life and death. Or... at least, between placing at the Olympics and falling...
If you plan on going from zero to hero, you'd better know your way around a number line. Oh wait... maybe that's just if you want to go from zero t...
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Description:
The precise placement of a decimal point can be the difference between life and death. Or... at least, between placing at the Olympics and falling short. Although we hear a fourth place finish at the Games feels like death.
Transcript
- 00:04
place value a la shmoop speedy O'Connor has been training all [Speedy running outdoors]
- 00:08
spring for the Summer Olympics to practice he's been running around and
- 00:12
around his parents living room honestly it's driving them nuts makes it
- 00:16
really hard to watch television at last the big day arrives and speedy runs his [Speedy running on a track]
- 00:21
best event, the 400 meters it was a close finish so he eagerly looks up at
Full Transcript
- 00:26
the board to find his exact time only to see that he ran the race in four hundred
- 00:31
seventy two point three seconds huh that can't be right if you divide that [Girl shaking her head]
- 00:36
number by 60 it works out to almost eight minutes and there's no way he was
- 00:40
that slow while Phillip the timekeeper must be responsible for this...
- 00:44
that guy was always having decimal issues speedy goes to talk to Phillip [Speedy speaks to Philip]
- 00:48
and give him a piece of his mind as it stood speedy showed a time of 472.3
- 00:55
seconds that's a 4 in the hundredths place seven in a tens place a 2 in the
- 00:59
ones and a 3 in the tenths place...Speedy alerted the timekeeper to his error but
- 01:07
then overcompensated by moving the decimal two spaces to the left now the
- 01:11
board showed that speedy had run his race in a time of 4.723 seconds
- 01:16
that's a 4 in the ones place a 7 in the tenths place a 2 in the hundredths place
- 01:23
and a 3 in the thousandths place it's a great time but not humanly possible so [Robots running]
- 01:30
speedy asked the timekeeper to try again this time the timekeeper moved the
- 01:34
decimal only one spot to the right giving speedy
- 01:36
a time of 47.23 seconds that's more like it looking up the board
- 01:41
speedy sees that swifty Stephenson posted a time of 47.18 seconds
- 01:46
rapido Roosevelt posted a time of 47.19
- 01:48
seconds and nippy Nottingham's posted a time of 47.22
- 01:52
seconds just barely edging out speedy and keeping him off [Speedy stood beside podium]
- 01:57
the podium oh well to give you an idea of how small that number in the hundreds
- 02:02
place can be check out how little difference there was between the four
- 02:05
runners one hundredths of a second is all that separated speedy and nippy and
- 02:09
there are a hundred of those in a single second talk about close all right it's
- 02:15
disappointing but speedy is a competitor and he's not gonna let this get him down [Speedy running around a couch with his parents sat]
- 02:19
it's back to his parents living room for another four years