3 ms·

In this case, 29 million seems reasonable. One factor was given as 11 million, after all, not 11.00 million. And don’t take my comment too seriously. It’s a min

• CaptArmchair 6y ago
  Oh! More then happy to answer. :-) So, I was just shooting a dart at a target. Translate the target to a Cartesian plan and you can express the position of the dart as a tuple (x,y) with two real numbers. However, you don't know the exact position of the bulls eye you're aiming at. At best, you're aiming for a bounded area representing an approximation. So, you're basically guestimating the distance between the position of the dart, and any other point within that area which might probably be what you're shooting for. Maybe I'm close, maybe I'm less close. I could have rounded upwards to 29 million, but unless you know exactly what you're aiming for, it's not possible to establish how rounding impacts accuracy. We do know that rounding within an interval of 1 million likely won't skew the answer too much, so both numbers are acceptable.
  • hanche 6y ago
    So our error estimates should have error estimates of their own? ;-) More seriously, though, both numbers are acceptable, and quite like far from the truth, but yours gives off an aura of accuracy with little or no basis. That’s not a problem on hn, given a highly numerate audience, but in other settings it could be problematic. Reminds me of a javelin throwing contest years ago, where results were measured in feet and inches. Given that an inch is 25.4 mm, a Norwegian paper did report the results with submillimeter accuracy.
    • CaptArmchair 6y ago
      Ha! Those are great arguments, and I totally agree! :-)