Chad Clark's Open Journal : 2007-11-05

1) Negative numbers confused some lotto customers.

Is this made up?  The Manchester Evening News article reads:

  A LOTTERY scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by Camelot - because
  players couldn't understand it.
  
  ...
  
  To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a
  temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. As the game had
  a winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing.
  
  But the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for
  some.
  
  ...
  
  "On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The
  numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the
  woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I
  hadn't."
  
  "I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is
  higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it."
  
  ...
  
  Peter Hall, of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, said: "The
  concept of minus numbers is something we would cover with 11 or 12 year
  olds, and we would expect them to have come across it before.