Thursday, May 07, 2009

Equal Pay Day and number practice for class

My students seem to be weak with numbers. They can see them written on the page and understand them in Japanese, but they have problems saying or understanding them in English, so I thought I would give them some practice. The important part was making it something interesting and meaningful, so I thought of something like a Harper's Index kind of effort. I have two lists which I will use for the next two weeks' worth of practice.

Equal Pay Day


Japan 60% less than men August 7, 2009
US 23% April 28, 2009
EU 15% February 24th, 2009
Germany 22% April 27, 2009
Italy 7% January 26, 2009
Belgium 6% January 22, 2009

The US date in April must not include Saturdays and Sundays as work days. I didn't put those in the Japanese calendar, because it went all the way into October with holidays and weekends. Women here will just have to work everyday. (No provisions for equal pay in law, but in signed treaties and conventions, which courts continue to ignore)
       

  Influenza
Swine flu
31 deaths
1884 sickened
2,400,000 doses of antiflu drugs from WHO to countries that need it the most
2,200,000,000 dollar loss in business and tourism in Mexico

Other flu
between 250 000 and 500 000 deaths every year worldwide
36,171 annual deaths in US
71 to 167,000,000,000 dollars a year, cost of flu annually in US

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