Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
One of my other hobbies is collecting Failure-to-Round Errors.
Why in the world would a metric country take something so soft as a six-foot separation rule and translate it into 1.8m instead of, say, two meters?
One prized item in my collection, from back when I was a letter carrier (early 1980s) and could read the Wall Street Journal every day for free, was the statement that women in Africa would carry (on their heads) loads of vegetables that could weigh as much as 66 pounds.
Seriously? Some editor dutifully translated the deliberately soft "up-to-30-kilos" without re-softening the number to, say "north of 60 pounds".
Also in my collection is/was an article somewhere that reported that, during the firebombing, there was no place for the average Dresden family to hide, as temperatures in the basements of their homes reached as high as, wait for it, 1472 degrees Fahrenheit.
But, wait! From where did they get that ridiculously precise temperature to describe what happened in thousands of basements in differing structures at various distances from the center of a growing firestorm?
The answer, as those of us who paid attention in chemistry class know, is that chemists use the 'point' at which (fabulously stable) water molecules begin to break down into their component elemental gasses as a near-metaphorical rule-of-thumb for what it means to be hot. Like, you know, 800C.
I discussed the solution - Intelligent Rounding - at some length here.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who awaits a survey of other metric countries to see how many translated six feet to 1.8 meters)
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I would have used 1.8m too and not rounded up. I work in an engineering environment so it is a typical common usage (like 6 ft power cords are always 1.8m). Typically, rounding up costs money or waste.
Al
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My favourite cartoon was a picture of a wall with a sign on it.
The sign read :-
Metrication Board.........100 yards.
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"... (like 6 ft power cords are always 1.8m) ..."
I am not sure that marking a floor in round numbers of a unit of measurement with which people are casually familiar is quite the same thing as establishing a second production line, and second inventory, and second set of labels, and second set of spare parts ...
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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From a literary style point of view, 1,472 degrees sounds so much hotter than "over 1,400 degrees". Using the precise number adds a certain impact.
It might even sound hotter than 1,500 degrees.
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I was a high school math teacher for 34 years. There are a lot of people out there who don't understand what 1.8 means, they barely understand what "2" means. Trust me, I know "of what I speak". I had a high school kid tell me once in the middle of a math class "I don't understand numbers". You are much better off using 2 than using 1.8. I will tell you a true, but horrible, story. We were giving out marks at the end of the year and split up a letter of the alphabet, say it was like this M - Me this line, all other M's the other line. There were a whole bunch of kids who really didn't know where to go, high school kids who didn't know the alphabet. It really is embarrassing sometimes to admit you are an ex-teacher! By the way, you really can't expect many of them to be able to round 1.8 to 2.
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The image looks like it is Japan so there is no nothing strange or unusual. If the government says 1.8m then it is 1.8m. If you have been in Japan much, you have to admire some things they do.
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"One of my other hobbies is collecting Failure-to-Round Errors."
ikeyPikey, You do not mention the cash figures in the background that are failure to round figures.
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One of my other hobbies is collecting Failure-to-Round Errors.
Why in the world would a metric country take something so soft as a six-foot separation rule and translate it into 1.8m instead of, say, two meters?
One prized item in my collection, from back when I was a letter carrier (early 1980s) and could read the Wall Street Journal every day for free, was the statement that women in Africa would carry (on their heads) loads of vegetables that could weigh as much as 66 pounds.
Seriously? Some editor dutifully translated the deliberately soft "up-to-30-kilos" without re-softening the number to, say "north of 60 pounds".
Also in my collection is/was an article somewhere that reported that, during the firebombing, there was no place for the average Dresden family to hide, as temperatures in the basements of their homes reached as high as, wait for it, 1472 degrees Fahrenheit.
But, wait! From where did they get that ridiculously precise temperature to describe what happened in thousands of basements in differing structures at various distances from the center of a growing firestorm?
The answer, as those of us who paid attention in chemistry class know, is that chemists use the 'point' at which (fabulously stable) water molecules begin to break down into their component elemental gasses as a near-metaphorical rule-of-thumb for what it means to be hot. Like, you know, 800C.
I discussed the solution - Intelligent Rounding - at some length here.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey (who awaits a survey of other metric countries to see how many translated six feet to 1.8 meters)
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re: Failure-to-Round Errors
I would have used 1.8m too and not rounded up. I work in an engineering environment so it is a typical common usage (like 6 ft power cords are always 1.8m). Typically, rounding up costs money or waste.
Al
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re: Failure-to-Round Errors
"... (like 6 ft power cords are always 1.8m) ..."
I am not sure that marking a floor in round numbers of a unit of measurement with which people are casually familiar is quite the same thing as establishing a second production line, and second inventory, and second set of labels, and second set of spare parts ...
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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this post
re: Failure-to-Round Errors
From a literary style point of view, 1,472 degrees sounds so much hotter than "over 1,400 degrees". Using the precise number adds a certain impact.
It might even sound hotter than 1,500 degrees.
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01:35:37pm
re: Failure-to-Round Errors
I was a high school math teacher for 34 years. There are a lot of people out there who don't understand what 1.8 means, they barely understand what "2" means. Trust me, I know "of what I speak". I had a high school kid tell me once in the middle of a math class "I don't understand numbers". You are much better off using 2 than using 1.8. I will tell you a true, but horrible, story. We were giving out marks at the end of the year and split up a letter of the alphabet, say it was like this M - Me this line, all other M's the other line. There were a whole bunch of kids who really didn't know where to go, high school kids who didn't know the alphabet. It really is embarrassing sometimes to admit you are an ex-teacher! By the way, you really can't expect many of them to be able to round 1.8 to 2.
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re: Failure-to-Round Errors
The image looks like it is Japan so there is no nothing strange or unusual. If the government says 1.8m then it is 1.8m. If you have been in Japan much, you have to admire some things they do.
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re: Failure-to-Round Errors
"One of my other hobbies is collecting Failure-to-Round Errors."
ikeyPikey, You do not mention the cash figures in the background that are failure to round figures.
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