This morning, I was listening to the radio while driving to work. Suddenly, a lottery was announced. To participate, one had only one thing to do: call the radio station. At the end of the spot, a very infamous sentence, at least in Germany, could be heard: „Ein Anruf kostet 50 Cent aus dem Festnetz, mobil deutlich teurer“ (A call costs 50 cents from a landline, significantly more from a cell phone). That triggered the mathematician in me: What does „significantly“ mean here? Like 1 EUR? Like 10 EUR? Like 55 Cents? The latter would already be an increase of 10%… is that significant? Where does significant start?
That lead me to a little research about that topic, which resulted in the sorites paradox [1]. Turns out, at least as far as I understand the philosophical implications: „significant“ is totally meaningless without a proper framing. As this is not done in the radio spot, that hint in the radio spot is completely nonsensical.
Look, I know that the actual price may depend on the cell phone carrier, which is why they cannot name a specific price here. However, the backup solution does not seem to solve the problem from my point of view. Can I solve it? No! Did I just want to talk about that issue? Yes!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox