Five and Fifteen-Seventeenths Percent

Five and Fifteen-Seventeenth Percent

Film buffs may recognize the title of this article as coming from The Maltese Falcon,

an early example of film noir and the directorial debut of the great film director, John Huston, son of Walter Huston, who had a brief walk-on in the movie and, seven years later, won an Academy Award in another of his son’s films: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

In the denoument of the movie, Casper Gutman, the character played by Sydney Greenstreet, calculates that the “additional expenditure in time” of spending another year looking for the “black bird” after having spent “17 years on the quest” amounts to five and fifteen-seventeenth percent. It takes him about a second to calculate, in his head, the percentage of one-seventeenth. This scene in the movie always fascinated me but not until recently did I wonder how he might have done it. What simple arithmetic trick would allow one to quickly calculate the percentage for 1/17.

I don’t know why it took me 40 years to look for a shortcut but when I did, it came fairly quickly. You just divide 17 into 100. It goes five times (17 times 10 is 170, half of that is 85, which is 17 times 5. 85 from 100 is 15, hence 15 seventeenths. Five and fifteen –seventeenths.

Had it been 18 years instead of 17 then 18 times five is 90. 90 from 100 is 10. So the answer would be 5 and ten-eighteenths or 5 and five-ninths. Likewise 16 years would mean 6 and a quarter percent.

So why seventeen, and not 16 or 18? Well listen how much better “five and fifteen-senventeenth percent rolls off of the tongue, then does six and a quarter percent or five and five-ninths percent.

A good bagel

It seems to me that there are four types of bagels in New Jersey. I call them by number. Type 1 are the real old fashioned kind. They are small and chewy with a crust you can't open by pulling apart by hand. These are found in the northern part of the state. I guess because the Jewish population is more concentrated there (?).

Type 2 are decent. They are bigger, not as chewy, but their crusts still contain some backbone. These are the fallback bagels that you can survive on if you can't get type 1. Sold in most bagel shops.

Type 3 and God help you. These are the bagels that we've all become used to, albeit, some less happily than others. Sold in supermarkets and many bagel shops, these are puffed out, airy things that are bagels in shape only with crusts that practically blend into the dough. You may think you are getting your money's worth with these huge pieces of dough but you're just getting another form of wonder bread.

Type 4: what are these? These are hard to explain. If you want an example of one, go into any Dunkin' Donuts shop and order one. We're on a whole new planet, here. Perhaps DD should rename them. Maybe bygollys?

I'm fortunate enough to work near a bagel shop that makes type1, so every week I bring home a dozen for my family. But the couple that owns the shop are getting on in years and I've heard that they will not be passing it on to their offspring. Will the old fashioned bagel fade away. Hopefully, not until I do.