MG: "I have no idea how credible any of this is, but I'm just not sure that the particular scene you cite should have (instantly :-) ruined the credibility of the character." It's in my skeptical nature. I don't even believe that a box of 250 toothpicks will necessarily contain 250 toothpicks. That at least would be an easy one to demonstrate or counterexample. The matter of a hearsay human ability without the benefit of a rigorous laboratory test, well, not so much.

On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 3:31 PM, <rcs@xmission.com> wrote:

[fifty year old memory below - details unreliable] I recall reading a WSJ article ~1970 (google can't find it -- have they digitized that far back?) about a counting fad that started in New York. Someone purchased a box of 100 paper clips. When they opened the box, it seemed short, so they counted and found ~70. Their story went viral, and sparked a fad of counting: sheets in a ream of paper, etc. A surprising number of "short count" cases turned up, enough to suggest that some manufacturers were deliberately cheating. The NY attorney general became involved. It was decided that (true) average counts were allowable if the deviation wasn't too big. Some makers routinely overfilled by 5-10%.

There's an anecdote about a town in the old west where a shopkeeper gets a fancy spring scale and adjusts it so it overestimates the weight. The shopkeeper later complains that the miller is shortchanging him on flour. The miller says, "I don't have a spring scale. I just put the five-pound bag of sugar I bought from you on one side of a balance and fill the other side with flour." Cereal boxes and potato chip bags say "sold by weight, not by volume" on the packaging to avoid accusations of underfilling. -- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://www.math.ucr.edu/~mike http://reperiendi.wordpress.com

RCS: "[fifty year old memory below - details unreliable] I recall reading a WSJ article ~1970 (google can't find it -- have they digitized that far back?) about a counting fad that started in New York... I found a Teamster article that referenced the WSJ one. I've pieced it together from snippet views but not all of the text was snippeted so I've had to trust Google's text bridging, and my own word-guesses where some near-the-binding text wasn't visible. Caveat emptor. Cheating of Consumer Becoming Commonplace [The International Teamster, vol. 72-73, 1975] Merchants and manufacturers - worried about profits, costs and competitors - have begun deliberately cheating American consumers. The victimizing has become so flagrant that the Wall Street Journal, which usually confines its news coverage to items of interest to corporate businessmen and coupon clippers, felt obliged to publish a front-page story recently documenting the short-changing. Alert consumer advocates are discovering the cheating in the most unexpected places. Most often it amounts to simple shorting of a product. At this point, the cheating is confined largely to metropolitan areas where every shaving helps to preserve extra profit margins for the merchant. A man in Miami, Fla., for example, purchased a bottle of vitamin tablets at a drugstore. When he looked inside the bottle later, it was obvious there were not 100 tablets in the bottle as stated on the label. A count showed the total to be 90 vitamin pills - a 10 per cent cut. The vitamin buyer pursued the shortage and was told by the manufacturer that the short bottle was caused by malfunctioning electronic production equipment. The consumer, Art Merrill, was quoted by the Journal as saying that he then began to count everything he purchased. Time after time he came up with short counts. Further probing has discovered boxes advertised as containing 100 screws, for instance, but actually containing only 60. A most common short-changing is in the area of cough drops and patent medicines. Aspirin, prescription drugs, electronic parts, paper clips, carbon paper, facial tissue, etc., were all checked by Merrill and friends. On the average, they found products anywhere from l0 to 30 per cent short of the amount advertised. "Few people," noted the Journal, "go to such lengths to make sure they are getting their money's worth. If they do stumble across a case of short-counting, most consumers forget it, figuring the loss is too small to complain about." But magnify the short counts by thousands upon thousands of consumers and the petty theft adds up to a hefty hidden profit - "rake-off" if you will - for the merchant and manufacturer. Fred Tucker, chief of New York State's Bureau of Weights and Measures, has estimated that the total loss to American consumers from short-counting amounted to between $2.5 million and $3 million in 1973. The practice has ballooned during 1974. The Journal told its readers: "A recent survey conducted by this newspaper confirms that short-counting may be so widespread as to represent a considerable drain on already-strained consumer budgets." The Journal survey counted more than 500 products selected at random. They ranged from office supplies to housewares, medicines and foodstuffs. It was found that about 41 per cent of the packages contained less than claimed, 48 per cent held advertised amounts, and 11 per cent provided more than promised. Of the four categories checked in the Journal's survey, office supplies led all others in short counts. Some 53 per cent of the items were short. One package of 100 paperclips, for example, held only 91. Other products counted were envelopes, index cards, thumbtacks, stenographer pads, staples and paper. About 40 per cent of foodstuffs checked by the Journal fell short. Only 43 packs of artificial sweetener turned up in a box of 50. A flagrant cheat was a package of 8 frozen lobster tails which somehow managed to produce only 6 tails. Housewares, the Journal found, were packaged more accurately. Only about a third of the products checked were shorted with facial tissues being almost chronically short by 10 to 15 per cent. Low-count products for sale in the marketplace are there because those who make and peddle them know there is small chance of being confronted with the deceit. Government officials charged with detecting such violations work under an enormous handicap. It is virtually impossible to check every bottle or package of merchandise offered for sale across the land. Another factor that slows enforcement is consumer apathy. Officials are quick to say they receive only a handful of complaints a year about short counts. It is almost as though the consumer is unaware of the thievery. Still another element is the attitude of the retail merchant himself. Many of them consider shorting their customers a way to recoup losses from pilferage. One hardware store manager admitted to the Journal that nails are one of his most "profitable" items. He was quoted: "Say I have a box of 100 nails on the shelf. One day a guy will need 10 and we'll charge him two cents apiece. Then we'll reseal the box. The next day a builder will come in and want box of 100. We take down the box of 90 and charge him for a full box. Why not?" Art Merrill, the consumer advocate whose investigations eventually led to the Journal story on short-counting, says that pharmacists have begun to short prescriptions to long-time customers. Merrill advises medicine purchasers to count their pills on the spot when paying for their prescriptions. He explains, "If you go home first and then come back, you haven't got a chance." Undoubtedly a lot of the short-counts are the result of factory count-devices that fail to function properly - because of maladjustment. But naturally, the Journal survey revealed, short-counts are a deliberate attack on the shopper's pocketbook.