Yesterday in math class my students had a problem where they were relating two variables to each other. For example, if you wanted to explain the relationship between the number of hours spent watching tv and grade point average, you would say that as the number of hours spent watching tv increases, the grade point average decreases.
One of the problems was relating the cost of a long distance phone call to the length (in minutes) of the phone call. Some of my students were flummoxed. One of them said, "I just don't know what this even means." I had to explain to them that in the olden days, before cell phones, when you wanted to call someone who lived far away it was called long distance. The further away they lived, the more money it cost to talk to them. The phone company charged you per minute. It's not like today where you just dial your cell phone and a minute is a minute no matter who you are calling.
I felt about as old as dirt.
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