

How Consumers Are Hopeless at Math - cs702
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/the-11-ways-that-consumers-are-hopeless-at-math/259479/

======
anothermachine
When did The Atlantic get so dumbed down?

> We're obsessed with the number 9. Up to 65 percent of all retail prices end
> in the number 9. Why? Everybody knows that $20 and $19.99 are the same
> thing. But the number 9 tells us something simple: This thing is discounted.
> This thing is cheap. This thing was priced by somebody who knows you like
> things discounted and cheap.

Or it was priced by someone who knows that _1_ 999 look smaller than _2_ 000

~~~
xmmx
I've heard so many theories about this. Can someone shed some light...

Some say it's for psychological purposes, others claim it's got something to
do with tax, and some say the cents value is used by the store to signify if
an item is discontinued/on sale.

~~~
Ineffable
I've heard it began when some shop assistants were, when selling an item,
simply pocketing the payment for the goods themselves and never putting the
money into the till. To counter this, the shop owners made it so that almost
nobody would pay for an item with exact change, meaning that the transaction
would have to be put into the till system in order to open the change drawer.

Interesting theory, no idea how accurate it is.

