4 ms·

> Dinosaurs only died out around 100 mya. Isn't 66 mya the generally accepted value?

by AnimalMuppet 2y ago

busterarm 2y ago
At the time scales we're considering that's not even a rounding _error_.
- HunterWare 2y ago
  40% is a rounding error? I hope not ;) (edit, fine 34%... but I'll say THAT might be a rounding error grin)
  - dmd 2y ago
    It's not 40%, though; the relevant 100% is not 100 million years, it's "several billion years".
  - busterarm 2y ago
    I said specifically it's not a rounding error. You would, at minimum, round to the nearest hundred million years, which was done.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      No. First, if the best known number is 66 mya, why throw away almost all the precision and call it 100 mya? Second, the number it was being compared to in roenxi's comment was 9 million years, not 4 billion years. So, yes, it is in fact a rounding error. ;-)
      - roenxi 2y ago
        As numbers get bigger the amount of rounding gets more acceptable. 100 to 101 is as 1e100 to 1e101, despite te latter technically being off by 90%. I think 100mya is perfectly fine. It doesn't undermine the point and this isn't trivia I plan to remember more accurately than that.
ertgbnm 2y ago
Yes, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction is agreed to be 66 mya with some surprisingly tight error bars of about 50k years. But for the purpose of discussion 100 mya is close enough in terms of orders of magnitude so there's not a need to be pedantic.
- Archelaos 2y ago
  I disagree. When one is only concernde about the order of magnitude, it should be given as 1*10^2 mya or as 0.1 bya. What the OP said is analogous to saying that one's grandfather died at the age of 100, when in reality he only lived to be 66.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    I don't know if it will make you feel better or worse, but when writing the comment I looked up wikipedia, saw "66", thought "eh" and wrote 100. If my grandfather had made it to 66 million I would have done the same thing.

4 ms·

> Dinosaurs only died out around 100 mya. Isn't 66 mya the generally accepted value?

by AnimalMuppet 2y ago

> Dinosaurs only died out around 100 mya. Isn't 66 mya the generally accepted value?

busterarm 2y ago
At the time scales we're considering that's not even a rounding _error_.
- HunterWare 2y ago
  40% is a rounding error? I hope not ;) (edit, fine 34%... but I'll say THAT might be a rounding error grin)
  - dmd 2y ago
    It's not 40%, though; the relevant 100% is not 100 million years, it's "several billion years".
  - busterarm 2y ago
    I said specifically it's not a rounding error. You would, at minimum, round to the nearest hundred million years, which was done.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      No. First, if the best known number is 66 mya, why throw away almost all the precision and call it 100 mya? Second, the number it was being compared to in roenxi's comment was 9 million years, not 4 billion years. So, yes, it is in fact a rounding error. ;-)
      - roenxi 2y ago
        As numbers get bigger the amount of rounding gets more acceptable. 100 to 101 is as 1e100 to 1e101, despite te latter technically being off by 90%. I think 100mya is perfectly fine. It doesn't undermine the point and this isn't trivia I plan to remember more accurately than that.
ertgbnm 2y ago
Yes, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction is agreed to be 66 mya with some surprisingly tight error bars of about 50k years. But for the purpose of discussion 100 mya is close enough in terms of orders of magnitude so there's not a need to be pedantic.
- Archelaos 2y ago
  I disagree. When one is only concernde about the order of magnitude, it should be given as 1*10^2 mya or as 0.1 bya. What the OP said is analogous to saying that one's grandfather died at the age of 100, when in reality he only lived to be 66.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    I don't know if it will make you feel better or worse, but when writing the comment I looked up wikipedia, saw "66", thought "eh" and wrote 100. If my grandfather had made it to 66 million I would have done the same thing.