3 ms·
> about 328 feet from the floating platform Someone doesn't understand precision. (That's 100 meters, so "about 300 feet".)
by ggchappell 9y ago
> about 328 feet from the floating platform
Someone doesn't understand precision.
(That's 100 meters, so "about 300 feet".)
- ReverseCold 9y agoI think it's not exactly 328 feet, so it's about 328 feet.
- jessriedel 9y agoEqually well could have said "about 328.084 feet".
- ReverseCold 9y agoHm, I don't know of a rule that specifies how to use the word "about". To me at least, "about 328 feet" seems okay. It gives you more precision than "about 300 feet" while still letting you know that it's not exactly 328 feet.
- williamscales 9y agoThe point is that extra precision is unwarranted. We only know that it missed by somewhere between 50 and 149 meters, so it's not appropriate to imply that we know it more precisely.
- ReverseCold 9y agoAh, didn't notice that. Thanks for clarifying.
- 0xTJ 9y ago328 feet is a unit conversion after already rounding to one significant figure
- aikinai 9y agoThis discussion reminds me of the time Apple quoted surprisingly precise weights for how much material they recovered through recycling[1]. It turned out the figures were converted from heavily rounded metric numbers. The best part was that in the websites for some some markets they converted the very precise imperial figure back to metric and claimed something that was close to the original rounded number number but off enough to be extra weird (like 2,999 kg of silver). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514106