History Main / WritersCannotDoMath

** And base Goku on the beginning of the Buu saga can't lift ''forty tons''. At this point, Goku is '''[[PowerLevels hundreds of times]]''' stronger than Vegeta back on the Saiyan arc, who was strong enough to [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroy Earth]]. This scene is often used on [[UltimateShowdownOfUltimateDestiny Goku vs. Superman]] debates to prove Supes would win.

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** Also, the Doctor has much the same problem as [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer Spike]] -- he keeps getting younger. Except for when he suddenly gets older. The Second Doctor said he was about 450. The Third was suddenly ''thousands'' of years old. The Fourth was about 750, Seven said he's 953, Ten is forty-seven years younger than that in ''The End of Time'', and Nine said he's been traveling in the TARDIS for 900 years and ''also'' claimed that's his age.

* ''{{Terminator}}'''s Judgment Day was to occur August 1997. John Connor was born February 1985. ''Terminator 2'' shows him at the age of ten being attacked by the Terminator. ''Terminator 3'' then {{Retcon}}s his T2 age to thirteen. The problem is that he wouldn't turn thirteen for six months after the bombs supposedly fell in Kyle Reese's timeline. Although since they also changed the date of Judgment Day, it's all a moot point.

* Very poor aging math in ''Up''. Carl is mentioned via WordOfGod to be 78; so he would be born roughly 1930. That means the childhood meeting of else was in 1938-1942; whilst the cars would suggest more 1926. Also note he sees a reel of Charles Muntz, who is about 20 years older than him. When he's middle aged, 28 AT LEAST, during the married life sequence, there's a bit with an imitation 40' Ford, in ~1958+ . And when he meets Charles Muntz, he's about his age and active - while he should be 108 years old...
** Apparently, ''tropers'' can't do math, because in the paragraph above, Carl is stated to be 78, Muntz is stated to be twenty years older, and the troper is surprised that Muntz doesn't act like he's ''108''. . .

*** If there are only 40 students in Harry's year and [[spoiler: there are 50 deaths in a battle where only the older students take part this means most of the students in Harry's year die.]]

*** A "typical" school population can rarely be determined from one year. Baby booms and boomlets come and go. There were 18 girls in my highschool graduating class, and over 30 in the junior year. It isn't hard to get the impression that Ginny's year, for instance, is significantly larger than Harry's.

**** What's wrong with admiring someone your whole life? Generally kids do that with their parents.\\
The wording (what was used above) means it could have been wanting to go to Hogwarts since his 7th year. He was still 'coming' (attending) Hogwarts then.

**** possibly because a lot of them were killed around the time of voldemort?
**** If there are only 3000 wizards in all of Great Britain, how do they have such a sprawling governmental bureaucracy? There wouldn't be nearly enough tax revenue for what we see, not even close. Towns that small, in the US anyways, will have a mayor, a sheriff, and maybe a few volunteers for the school board or something. So unless the entire Ministry isn't getting paid...Also makes you wonder how the economy works. How do the Malfoys have so much money? We never see their business, and there really aren't enough consumers for anyone to get very wealthy. It could be mostly inheritance, but that just pushes the issue back a few generations.
*** "The trouble is, about a hundred thousand wizards turn up at the World Cup […] A limited number use Muggle transport, but we can't have too many clogging up
their buses and trains." A hundred thousand wizards attend a World Cup in UK while there are only 3000 wizards there? Yeah, more than one billion people went to World Cup in South Africa.

* An early draft of ''SlumdogMillionaire'' had it so that when Jamal was 7, Latika was 11, but then when he was 18, so was she. Later on it's changed so that she's only a year older than him, although the ages are never actually made clear in the film itself.

* ''{{Pi}}'': Mathematician/genius Max Cohen tells the Kaballists that he can't just tell them the 216 digit {{MacGuffin}} number because "You've already written down every 216 digit number and intoned them all and what has it gotten you?" To do so would, of course, take even a large group of researchers, such as the entire population of the Earth, significantly longer than the age of the Universe to do, and [[strike:most likely more ink than there is mass in the visible universe]] even if you could write one such number on each atom in existence, you'd run out of atoms long before. Calculating the precise level of absurdity of 10^216 can be left to others, but any mathematician should be well aware of this. Of course, [[MindScrew Max and reality don't always see eye to eye]].

** Are you sure that isn't 13 minutes 57 seconds?

** Also, a formula for the sides of the "golden rectangle" has a/b=(a+ b)/a instead of a/b=b/(a+ b). (Doesn't matter to the plot in any way.)

* Two passages in ''TheBible'' infamously seem to imply that pi=3, although there are plenty of ways around it if you believe the book to be inerrant.

** And base Goku on the beginning of the Buu saga can't lift ''forty tons''. At this point, Goku is '''[[PowerLevels hundreds of times]]''' stronger than Vegeta back on the Saiyan arc, who was strong enough to [[EarthShateringKaboom destroy Earth]]. This scene is often used on [[UltimateShowdownOfUltimateDestiny Goku vs. Superman]] debates to prove Supes would win.

Gohan is even worse: He's first stated to be 4.5 years old, and his age is given as 16 (when he should be chronologically 17, [[YearInsideHourOutside physically 18]]) in the Buu saga, given that roughly a year and two-thirds pass between the destruction of Namek and Trunks' first appearance.\
And of course, there's the fact Goten is 7 when we first see him, but just under 7 years went in-between the Cell saga and its TimeSkip to the Buu saga, so in order for him to be 7, he should have been ''born'' (not just conceived) during the Androids saga... where Chichi didn't even look pregnant. Figures.

* In ''NeverBeenKissed'', the geeky kids sell pies at a bake sale, with a sign proclaiming "pi = 3.1457" followed by some more digits to make it look sufficiently nerdy. Only the first 3 digits are correct; the rest is nonsense.

* ''NightAtTheMuseum: Battle of the Smithsonian'': AlbertEinstein, [[WallBanger of all people]], tells Larry that the "exact" value of pi is 3.1495265.

*** An anime-exclusive flashback shows Itachi joining after Orochimaru did, looking pretty much the same as he does during the present. Much of the conflict over how old the characters "look" comes from scenes added to the anime, which are non-canon.

** There's also the fact that if your last name is "Son", your age is going to get very confusing: \

** When talking about DragonBall and math, one should always remember how Toriyama apparently has no idea how heavy a kilogram is, compared to pretty much the entirety of his characters' feats. It gets kinda ridiculous when people who can casually jump hundreds of feet in the air and outmuscle guys that travel by throwing and then jumping onto stone pillars cross-continent at super-sonic speeds are barely able to lift fifty pound shoes. Apparently, an out of shape desk jockey in the real world would stand a good chance of winning the Tenkaichi Budokai.

** That show has about three different, contradictory explanations for how DW became a hero.

* Alex O'Connell's age in ''TheMummy Returns''. He's eight, so he'd have to have been born in 1925. Rick and Evy met in 1926. Neat trick, Alex.