A friend of mine had a leaky tap. Not the sort that threatens flood. Not the sort requiring of a finger in a hole. Just a steady drip drip drip.

The trouble was he was about to go away for the week and, well, that drip wasn’t about to dry up anytime soon.

But plumbers are expensive. Call out charges alone seem prohibitive.

So it’s either a steady drip for a week or a major drain on the salary.

This is what he did.

He calculated the rate of the drip. It was four drips every minute. That didn’t sound like a big deal.

Then he multiplied that by sixty to get the drops per hours. Multiplied again by twenty four for the day rate before doing it again to get the week (that’s another seven for those of you calculating along with him).

This left him with the number of drips that would drop over the week. Got it? 40,320.

Suddenly that seemed like a lot. A lot of drips, a lot of water.

And he was going away. For the week.

Know what he did?

He tried to fix it himself, made it worse and had to call the plumber.

My friend is a programmer. Sometimes he takes the long way around to find a solution but at least he’s thought it through every step of the way and understood why he needed that plumber.

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