Infomercial Bad Math: Fur Wizard

The Fur Wizard is different than other lint brushes. You see, instead of having the lint brush on one side, it has one on each side. That’s a total of two sides! Wow!

During the course of their ad touting all the amazing things this brush can do, they say this (around 0:20):

Fur Wizard is faster because of the double-sided action. It cleans up twice as much in half the time of other lint brushes!

No. With two sides, it can do the work in half the time, or twice the work in the same amount of time. You only get credit for doubling the output, you don’t get to quadruple it.

And can it even double the output? Hardly. Remember, the two brushes are on opposite sides, you can’t use them simultaneously.

Can it really do twice the work in the same amount of time? Hard to see how. Since you can’t use the brushes at the same time, two lint brushes are going to get the same amount of lint up in the same amount of time. If one is two-sided, maybe you need to clean it less often, but that’s hardly going to do double the work.

Can it really do the same work in half the time? Hard to see how. I guess you can gather twice as much lint up before you need to clean the brush, but that’s hardly going to halve the time.

Their claim is absurd. And by the way, the Fur Wizard costs there are plenty of two-sided lint brushes out there. Amazon and Walmart have them for $7.

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