5 ms·
> I'd love to hear about what you think is "untrustworthy" about converting from kilometres to miles so the audience can visualize the distance. 1000 km = 621 m
by Swizec 2y ago
> I'd love to hear about what you think is "untrustworthy" about converting from kilometres to miles so the audience can visualize the distance. 1000 km = 621 miles, this is a fact.
1000km is not an exact figure. It’s rounded, probably up. Somewhere between 900km and 1100km. Likely closer to 999km than 1099 because they’d want to publish the biggest number they can reasonably claim. So you can assume the real range is between 900km and 999km.
The correct translation to miles would be “600mi”. Because 621 invents precision that wasn’t there in the original figure.
- FredPret 2y agoThe same happens in the US->rest of world direction when you read about "approximately 16km" or "approximately 2.54cm".
- davoneus 2y agoWhat petty BS; it's a rounding error of a press release! If you want numerical precision, go read American Mathematical Society papers.
- badpun 2y agoIt’s not a rounding error.
- arghwhat 2y agoConverting 1000 km to 600 miles is always wrong. Assuming that 1000km is not an exact figure solely because its least significant digits are zero is also wrong, and making up a ±10% margin is very wrong. The correct thing to do would be to write the conversion as "1000 km (~621 miles)", so that the original value is not lost.