Arithmetic that makes you cringe

[ElyDave]

In the real world other than the USA, most of the time when you encounter a ton(ne) it's unspecified cos it's either obvious or doesn't really make any difference, seeing as they're so close. I'd be in favour of spelling both versions "ton" cos I don't like the doubled consonant followed by the e (similarly I prefer gram to gramme). When accuracy is needed, use kgs. Or maybe lbs if dealing with Americans.

In some cases it is a very important distinction. In greenhouse gas terms, everything is expressed in tonnes of CO2 equivalent, so a 2000lb ton is a 10% difference vs a 1000kg tonne, and if you then include the GWP factors for non CO2 species, you compound that in absolute terms. Its something that I am constantly on the look out for.

That and other stupid units like cu.ft vs scf vs ncf.

I did ask a bunch of Norwegians which version they were working with, just to be sure, and they looked very confused, not realising that there were different versions available.

[cygnet]

Putting it here as I'm guessing it's a conversion error:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/mar/17/nasa-moon-rocket-artemis-florida-cape-kennedy

...The process of moving the 5.75-million-ton, 32-storey-tall SLS-Orion spacecraft...

This article was amended on 18th March

I'm struggling to think of a conversion that would get  "one" from 2600t to 5.6Mt (or T depending on what ElyDave said)
It's not just one order or magnitude out...

But at least they had the decency to correct? and acknowledge the change.

Still looking at you BBC and you Institution of Civil Engineers for some glaring numerical errors.

[jsabine]

I'm struggling to think of a conversion that would get  "one" from 2600t to 5.6Mt (or T depending on what ElyDave said)
It's not just one order or magnitude out...

Lb to kg to ton(ne)s (or vice versa), a rounding error, and missing out a stage?

5600lb is 2540kg, 2600kg is 5732lb, so numbers above 2551(kg=5624lb) or below 5649(lb=2562kg) get us there.

(ETA - And I've just read the Guardian's correction, and reread Pingu's post, and it was 5.75 million tons. 5750lb is 2608kg. I bet the NASA press release says 5,750,000lb.)

(ETFA - That Guardian/Reuters story was published on 17th March, before the rocket's rollout began. The only press release directly on the rollout that's currently available on the NASA website is from 18th March, after the rollout had completed successfully. It gives the weight as 3.5 million lbs. That's not 2,600 tons.

However, a press release the day before says that once the rocket had been rolled out, they'll fuel it with 700,000 gallons of propellant (liquid hydrogen and oxygen). 700,000 US gallons is 2,649,788 litres.

While liquid oxygen is a bit denser than water, and liquid hydrogen is a lot less dense, what's the reckoning a time-pressed journo figured 'hey, a litre's a kilo,' rounded it to 2,600 tons, and missed the fact that's the weight of the fuel, not the weight of the rocket?)

(ETFFA - There's a Feb 3rd press release that says the rocket's weight is 5.75 million lb. FFS.)

[Cudzoziemiec]

Contract soldiers (who sign up for a period of three years) are paid 200% less than US counterparts, at about US$1,000 (£760) a month,

200% less? Isn't that a negative number?

[Salvatore]

At the risk of alienating and enraging people who refuse to click on links to twitter, I present this thread for your amusement

https://twitter.com/darachos/status/1512312741264080899

In unrelated news, last month I was invited for an AAA screening, "offered free of charge to all men in their 65th year". Given that I turned 65 7 months ago, I'm now in my 66th year. Does that mean I'll have to pay?

See also reporting of incidents in football matches, where "in the 21st minute" is synonymous with "after 21 minutes". Or "on 21 minutes" which is as far as I know is unique to football reportage.

[Kim]

In unrelated news, last month I was invited for an AAA screening, "offered free of charge to all men in their 65th year". Given that I turned 65 7 months ago, I'm now in my 66th year. Does that mean I'll have to pay?

See also reporting of incidents in football matches, where "in the 21st minute" is synonymous with "after 21 minutes". Or "on 21 minutes" which is as far as I know is unique to football reportage.

"There are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors."

I have sympathy for this when applied to time periods, because it's the sort of thing that you get more wrong the more you think about it, until you reach true enlightenment.  It doesn't help that people (well, normal people) don't like to start counting from zero, which makes the language wooly: I'd make distinction between "the 21st minute" and "minute 21", but I suspect most people wouldn't.  I expect someone re-phrased "65 years old" to "in their 65th year" in an attempt to avoid an implied equal-to-or-greater-than...

The football convention is weird, though.

[Pingu]

AAAs with no charge are not much use, thobut.

[Salvatore]

AAAs with no charge are not much use, thobut.

I see what you did there.

The screening was this morning and there is no sign of an A on my AA.

[hellymedic]

From today's official Coronavirus stats…

A confirmed case is someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.

Between 7 April 2022 and 13 April 2022, 253,456 people had a confirmed positive test result. This shows a decrease of -34.9% compared to the previous 7 days.

My bold. A decrease with a negative sign.

GGGGGRRRR!

[ElyDave]

So the number went up?
 

[hellymedic]

I think the number went down but…

Double negatives AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

[T42]

I think they consider a double negative as being, like, y'know, very negative.

[Giraffe]

Well, it's certainly a no-no (does that make it yes?).

[rafletcher]

Yodel tracking site today.

You driver is making stop 40 of 151.

Stops before you 116.

ETA: We were 156 of 151. I can only conjecture 5 deliveries were cancelled or deferred.

[Mr Larrington]

“Stops before you: 13” said Yodel when I prodded F5 yesterday arvo.  Ten seconds later the doorbell was rung by the Yodelling Hoover Driver with my new Shiny clutched in his paw.

[Kim]

“Stops before you: 13” said Yodel when I prodded F5 yesterday arvo.  Ten seconds later the doorbell was rung by the Yodelling Hoover Driver with my new Shiny clutched in his paw.

I think we've concluded those things are a work of fiction, if only for data protection reasons.

[Pickled Onion]

I was intrigued why my broadband bill is 1p over this month.

I pay £28 a month which is £23.33 plus £4.67 VAT = £28

This time I got a two month bill and it turns out the actual price is £23.33333333333... etc so two of those, rounded comes to £46.67

But hang on, that shouldn't matter, because 20% of £46.67 is £9.33 so all should be good. Ah but no, that's not what they've done. Although they billed the base price of two times the unrounded figure, the VAT is two times the rounded VAT = £9.34

Now 1p is neither here nor there, but over, say, a million customers that's £10,000 and it certainly won't go to HMRC. One has to wonder if the odd choice of different rounding on two rows of the bill wasn't deliberate.

[Giraffe]

Now, not sure what was meant by this or even if I heard correctly: Springwatch, Megan in Newcastle, aprox. 'gardens in Newcastle have a total area greater than all of the National Parks put together' (very rough paraphrase). Now, The Lake District is quite close to the total area of Newcastle Metropolitan Borough and Greater London.
Possibly it should be more than the total area of gardens in the Parks, as some of the parks have lots of non-garden.

[Giraffe]

Pick the bones out of an article about ants, insulin, and longevity:

"Anti-insulin protein helps queen ants live five times longer than workers " fair enough.

"...alongside this reproductive transition is a dramatic 500% increase in lifespan." so, 6x the life.

"...tend to live for between four and five years, while workers barely last longer than seven months." approx. 7 - 8½x as long.

[Cudzoziemiec]

When does an ant's life begin anyway? When the egg is laid? When it hatches as a larva? When it emerges from the pupa as a adult ant? And at what point does the differentiation between queen and worker happen? This suggests the queen/worker distinction begins as larvae, but it's not clear from that whether the pupae are distinct or only the adults. It also says queens can live "for decades under the right conditions" so could be 20 or more times the lifespan of a worker.

[Pickled Onion]

Not arithmetic, but I couldn't find a numeracy that makes you cringe thread

... and against the Euro, Sterling is trading at one Euro point one hundred and fifty-nine cents...

[Diver300]

From:-https://www.purpleparking.com/airport-parking/london-heathrow/purple-parking-heathrow-terminal-2-terminal-3

The maximum length for vehicles is 2.15 metres

I feel that restricting parking to vehicles significantly shorter than a Smart car 2 seater may leave them limited clientele.

[hellymedic]

Not arithmetic, but I couldn't find a numeracy that makes you cringe thread

... and against the Euro, Sterling is trading at one Euro point one hundred and fifty-nine cents...

I was disappointed with the latest Arrivée and its 'LEL Volunteer Heroes Page08' cover...

[Pingu]

Julio Loace was 24 when, in the summer of 1962... Loace, now 86...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/16/cuban-missile-crisis-60-years-on-russians

[Mrs Pingu]

I watched a colleague the other day, clever man, scientist, probably has a doctorate, working out percent on a calculator and still needing to do the x100 step at the end.