Need a reason to NOT work out?

For many of our positions candidates have the unenviable task of completing our basic math test. Nothing seems to bring on the anxiety jitters in candidates more than sitting down to what really is a basic exercise covering things like addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, percentages, decimals, and fractions, as well as a couple of word problems geared towards a workers' compensation question we get asked about all the time. To make it even easier we even allow candidates to use a calculator.

We know many people struggle with math (I count myself among them). For our employees who also have to take the test when they apply for some promotional opportunities we have developed some practice exercises  designed to help overcome their math anxiety. I was showing Megan, who recently joined our HR team, these exercises this morning so that she could go over them with one of our employees. One of these exercises is titled "Having Fun with Math!" (how creative is that?). At the end of "Having Fun with Math" we ask employees a seemingly silly question about how fast they are moving. This always elicits some puzzled expressions until we explain that we are going to use very basic math to calculate how fast we are all moving ... around the sun. For those who remember their high school geometry you'll recall that the circumference of a circle is 2 times Pi (approximately 3.142) times the Radius:

I've got the calculation below, but the answer to our question is that we are all moving at about 66,000 miles an hour this old earth sure gives a remarkably smooth ride!). When I told Megan how fast she was moving her comment was "If I'm moving that fast then I guess I don't have to work out..." If that's not the best excuse to avoid working up a sweat then I don't know what is!


Don't think you are moving 66,000 miles an hour? Here's the basic math!

• The earth is approximately 93 million miles from the sun so 93 million is the Radius
• The earth goes around the sun once every 365 days so 2 X 3.142 X 93 million is the circumference of the earth's orbit (circle) around the sun
• 2 X 3.142 X 93 million equals an annual journey of about 584.5 million miles
• 584.5 million miles a year divided by 365 days  equals 1.6 million miles per day
• 1.6 million miles per day divided by 24 hours equals .0667 million miles per hour
• .0667 times 1,000,000 (1 million) equals...... 66,724 miles per hour!