3 ms·

Not just lat/lon. I find myself amused when The Washington Post's education columnist Jay Matthews--quite a sharp guy from all I can tell--runs his high school

by cafard 7y ago

Not just lat/lon. I find myself amused when The Washington Post's education columnist Jay Matthews--quite a sharp guy from all I can tell--runs his high school "challenge index" (AP tests taken / size of graduating class) out to six decimal points for small schools. Somebody give that man a slide rule.

sokoloff 7y ago
When I see those errors, I often try to work out the exact input figures that led to the stats reported. At work, I recently saw a survey result from a small customer base reported as "31.3% of respondents" rather than the more communicative "5 out of 16..."
- cafard 7y ago
  Quite. That way I was able to figure out how many students graduated from Washington International School that year. For that matter, my wife taught a class one year at a local university. The class had 29 students, or at least 29 who bothered to fill out the evaluation, and the evaluation had a couple of places right of the decimal point. I found myself going reckoning, "hmm, 27 of 29 though that ...".
carapace 7y ago
I didn't really get significant digits until I played with a slide rule.
kps 7y ago
Here in the frozen north, newpapers^H^H^H^H^H^H sites insert metric conversions everywhere. “I must have lost ten pounds [4.5359237 kg] on that run!”
- protonfish 7y ago
  I absolutely love it when I read something like "The object was nearly 1 foot (30.48 cm) long."
  - hanche 7y ago
    “I wouldn’t touch that with a 3048 millimeter stick.” (A.k.a. a ten foot pole.)
    - msla 7y ago
      I wonder when Reznor is going to make the next 22.86 Centimeter Nails album. (Or is that Centimetre? Probably a metric/Imperial thing... )
secabeen 7y ago
That "index" is terrible. It claims to be a ranking of all schools: > Schools ranked no. 220 or above are in the top 1 percent of America’s 22,000 high schools, no. 440 or above are in the top 2 percent and so on. But he only has ~2,000 schools in his database, or less than 10% of all schools.

by cafard 7y ago

sokoloff 7y ago

When I see those errors, I often try to work out the exact input figures that led to the stats reported. At work, I recently saw a survey result from a small customer base reported as "31.3% of respondents" rather than the more communicative "5 out of 16..."

cafard 7y ago
Quite. That way I was able to figure out how many students graduated from Washington International School that year. For that matter, my wife taught a class one year at a local university. The class had 29 students, or at least 29 who bothered to fill out the evaluation, and the evaluation had a couple of places right of the decimal point. I found myself going reckoning, "hmm, 27 of 29 though that ...".

carapace 7y ago

I didn't really get significant digits until I played with a slide rule.

kps 7y ago

Here in the frozen north, newpapers^H^H^H^H^H^H sites insert metric conversions everywhere. “I must have lost ten pounds [4.5359237 kg] on that run!”

protonfish 7y ago
I absolutely love it when I read something like "The object was nearly 1 foot (30.48 cm) long."
- hanche 7y ago
  “I wouldn’t touch that with a 3048 millimeter stick.” (A.k.a. a ten foot pole.)
  - msla 7y ago
    I wonder when Reznor is going to make the next 22.86 Centimeter Nails album. (Or is that Centimetre? Probably a metric/Imperial thing... )

secabeen 7y ago

That "index" is terrible. It claims to be a ranking of all schools: > Schools ranked no. 220 or above are in the top 1 percent of America’s 22,000 high schools, no. 440 or above are in the top 2 percent and so on. But he only has ~2,000 schools in his database, or less than 10% of all schools.