5 ms·

Why does “Turn! Turn! Turn!” equal 241217.524881?

154 points by robinhouston 5y ago

ricardo81 5y ago
Slightly OT, the given answer makes more sense than some (semi) organic result I see for a search for 'population nairn'. It returned a "people also ask of": "What is the fastest town in Scotland"? Answer: walkwithdinosaurs Nonsensical question and answer, not related to the query. Clicking through to the result you can see how G turned a statement into a question, just the why doesn't seem to too clever.
- dalemyers 5y ago
  The question makes sense. It’s a common joke in Scotland. “What’s the fastest town in Scotland? Naaairnnnn… “ (imagine car noises) The “answer” on the other hand… Edit: Just did a search and the answer comes from the top result which is a blog with that name. That blog has the joke posted on it. Google could be better here, but I think it's a little unreasonable for Google to understand jokes.
  - ricardo81 5y ago
    I must live too far South to have heard that one, makes more sense to me now. I guess Google's seen it often enough posed as a question that it has decided it's relevant enough for a wider breadth of Nairn queries.
codesections 5y ago
> It appears that Google search uses the following syntax for conversions between different units or currencies: target_unit! <expression> (Though I can't find any documentation for this). I've always been baffled by why Google search — the flagship product by the world's largest tech company — has so many totally undocumented features. I understand having some easter eggs (the question "did you mean 'recursion'?" when googling "recursion" ), but even the sort of basic features noted in TFA seem totally undocumented.
- rocqua 5y ago
  I suppose they do this because it makes it easier to change features. But that is silly because the undocumented features don't get used.
  - codesections 5y ago
    > I suppose they do this because it makes it easier to change features. Yeah, and for a scrappy startup trying to achieve feature parity despite having far fewer employees, that might make sense. But it's not like Google is a nimble startup without the luxury of hiring dedicated technical writers.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    I also think that documentation implies long-term support, and a commitment not to change the expected behavior. Any time you document something, you are telling people that this is not only the way that the software works now, but also the way that you intend it to work in the future. That established intent seems anathema to Google's culture, with the amount of churn and project cancellation that exists.
- yourenotsmart 5y ago
  > I've always been baffled by why Google search — the flagship product by the world's largest tech company — has so many totally undocumented features. If I can speculate on their overall behavior, there's no intent behind this. They are relatively decentralized, and everyone is throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. To have a feature known you need concerted effort by design teams to make it accessible, marketing to make it known and so on. There's nothing of the sort with Google.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  A tiny feature like this can be added by a single engineer in a few hours/days. They will require 1 or 2 other team mates to code review. Adding public documentation of that feature will require translation into all supported languages, which will incur a cost, and sign off of those costs will require approval from a whole slew of higher up and other-team people. It will probably involve processes and systems the engineer has never used before. Translations are often batched (so that a single human does all the translations to avoid inconsistency of terminology), so it might be months till the next batch is done. The copy will need to be reviewed and rewritten by various technical writers. Suddenly the 'spend a few hours adding a tiny little feature' becomes a week or two...
polm23 5y ago
Sounds like the large buddhist numbers like the 不可説不可説転 (unexplainable unexplainable turn). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_large_numbers?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_large_numbers?wprov...
Igelau 5y ago
There's a time to parse mathematical expressions, a time to leave refrain from parsing altogether.
cturtle 5y ago
Only slightly related, but this reminds me of searching on Google “how many electrons are in the Sun”. The quick answer page parser fails beautifully. I wonder how often Google returns something wrong or completely unexpected for its quick answer result.
- aaaxyz 5y ago
  About half the time in my experience

154 points by robinhouston 5y ago

Slightly OT, the given answer makes more sense than some (semi) organic result I see for a search for 'population nairn'. It returned a "people also ask of": "What is the fastest town in Scotland"? Answer: walkwithdinosaurs Nonsensical question and answer, not related to the query. Clicking through to the result you can see how G turned a statement into a question, just the why doesn't seem to too clever.

dalemyers 5y ago
The question makes sense. It’s a common joke in Scotland. “What’s the fastest town in Scotland? Naaairnnnn… “ (imagine car noises) The “answer” on the other hand… Edit: Just did a search and the answer comes from the top result which is a blog with that name. That blog has the joke posted on it. Google could be better here, but I think it's a little unreasonable for Google to understand jokes.
- ricardo81 5y ago
  I must live too far South to have heard that one, makes more sense to me now. I guess Google's seen it often enough posed as a question that it has decided it's relevant enough for a wider breadth of Nairn queries.

codesections 5y ago

> It appears that Google search uses the following syntax for conversions between different units or currencies: target_unit! <expression> (Though I can't find any documentation for this). I've always been baffled by why Google search — the flagship product by the world's largest tech company — has so many totally undocumented features. I understand having some easter eggs (the question "did you mean 'recursion'?" when googling "recursion" ), but even the sort of basic features noted in TFA seem totally undocumented.

rocqua 5y ago
I suppose they do this because it makes it easier to change features. But that is silly because the undocumented features don't get used.
- codesections 5y ago
  > I suppose they do this because it makes it easier to change features. Yeah, and for a scrappy startup trying to achieve feature parity despite having far fewer employees, that might make sense. But it's not like Google is a nimble startup without the luxury of hiring dedicated technical writers.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  I also think that documentation implies long-term support, and a commitment not to change the expected behavior. Any time you document something, you are telling people that this is not only the way that the software works now, but also the way that you intend it to work in the future. That established intent seems anathema to Google's culture, with the amount of churn and project cancellation that exists.
yourenotsmart 5y ago
> I've always been baffled by why Google search — the flagship product by the world's largest tech company — has so many totally undocumented features. If I can speculate on their overall behavior, there's no intent behind this. They are relatively decentralized, and everyone is throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. To have a feature known you need concerted effort by design teams to make it accessible, marketing to make it known and so on. There's nothing of the sort with Google.
londons_explore 5y ago
A tiny feature like this can be added by a single engineer in a few hours/days. They will require 1 or 2 other team mates to code review. Adding public documentation of that feature will require translation into all supported languages, which will incur a cost, and sign off of those costs will require approval from a whole slew of higher up and other-team people. It will probably involve processes and systems the engineer has never used before. Translations are often batched (so that a single human does all the translations to avoid inconsistency of terminology), so it might be months till the next batch is done. The copy will need to be reviewed and rewritten by various technical writers. Suddenly the 'spend a few hours adding a tiny little feature' becomes a week or two...

polm23 5y ago

Sounds like the large buddhist numbers like the 不可説不可説転 (unexplainable unexplainable turn). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_large_numbers?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_large_numbers?wprov...

Igelau 5y ago

There's a time to parse mathematical expressions, a time to leave refrain from parsing altogether.

cturtle 5y ago

Only slightly related, but this reminds me of searching on Google “how many electrons are in the Sun”. The quick answer page parser fails beautifully. I wonder how often Google returns something wrong or completely unexpected for its quick answer result.

aaaxyz 5y ago
About half the time in my experience