Mathematical discrepancies

Having grown up surrounded by all of these mathematical discrepancies I can truthfully say that I as a student have never really associated any of these examples to my work inside of math class. For me personally outside the realm of math when someone says to give 120% it would just seem like a figure of speech which is referring to going above and beyond what is expected of you. While doing my math homework though I wouldn't have ever thought that 120% was the actual amount of which it is possible for anything to give. 

As a child I always thought of a cube, square and in many cases rectangle as one in the same. This does frustrate me, because after being taught these things it took me an amazing amount of time to set myself straight about the many separate definitions. I had an especially hard time with this not only because of the ice "cube" but because at the time a square on paper looked as far as i was concerned exactly the same as a cube. I think that people can be somewhat illiterate in math just because of how lazy other people are in not explaining the full definitions of difficult to comprehend things. Lacking the patience to wait until the concept is fully understood is also an issue thus leaving a gap in the students understanding which leads to being even more illiterate .