6 ms·
Flooring makes more sense in every case, from years to milliseconds and more. A few reasons: You want to send a message at exactly 13:00:00, you have a digital
by GuB-42 2y ago
Flooring makes more sense in every case, from years to milliseconds and more. A few reasons:
You want to send a message at exactly 13:00:00, you have a digital clock that doesn't show seconds. What you do is that you watch your clock, and as soon as it goes from 12:59 to 13:00, you press the button. That's also how you set the time precisely by hand. With rounding, that would be 12:59:30, who wants to send a message at precisely 12:59:30 ?
You have a meeting at 13:00:00, you watch the clock to see if you are early or late. With flooring, if you see 13:00, you know you are late. With rounding, you are not sure.
It is common for digital clocks to have big numbers for hours and minutes and small numbers for seconds. If you are not interested in seconds, you can look quickly from afar and you have your usual, floored time. If you want to be precise, you look closer and get your seconds. Rounding the minutes would be wrong, because it wouldn't match the time with seconds. And you don't want clocks with a small display for seconds you may not even see to show a different time than those that don't.
And if you just want to know the approximate time and don't care about being precise to the second, then rounding up or down doesn't really matter.
- TZubiri 2y agoBut if every clock was like that, then 12:59:30 would be the new 13:00:00
- dylan604 2y agoHow does 12:59:30 floor to 13:00:00? Wouldn't that be the result of ceil?
- pkulak 2y agoOnly until the next article saying that "all clocks are 0.5 seconds early" and we then switch to randomized rounding.
- soneil 2y agoSo if my watch shows seconds, I'd be late at 12:59:31?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bmicraft 2y agoIf someone without seconds on their clock starts the meeting, yes.
- animuchan 2y agoThis is a weirdly satisfying thought, if entirely unrealistic in a corporate setting: what if meetings in general were more of a consensus thing, and less of a rigid time slot thing.
- andy800 2y agoNo, this is the point of the article. The person without the seconds could not tell if you were late or not when his watch says 1:00. A display of 1:00 means the actual time is between 12:59:30 and 1:00:30, so there's a 50% chance the person arrived early. Only the person with the second hand could tell for sure.
- bmicraft 2y agoIt's a bad point. If the clock says 1:00 and you aren't there you're late. Your boss won't like hearing "well technically I wasn't late because you see your clock has the seconds rounded to minutes so you can't actually know if I'm late". The best possible outcome you could get from that is that the meeting starts at 12:59:30 now.
- andy800 2y agoI'm simply communicating the point of the article. Take it up with the author if you don't like it or don't agree. And he'll tell you that if sub-minute precision is necessary (i.e. someone would be reprimanded for being under 30 seconds late to a meeting) the simple solution is to include a second hand on those clocks, and there won't be any confusion. (Of course, what's the likelihood of a basic office wall clock being accurate to within 30 seconds anyway, but that's a whole other rabbit hole)
- zzo38computer 2y agoI still think that flooring would be better; however, if you did insist to do this rounding instead then you could use a different convention for numbering seconds with e.g. -30 to +30 instead of 0 to 60. However, I think that this is not worth it, and that the existing use of flooring is much better, although if you want such precision with timing then you really should display the seconds, rather than using a clock that does not display seconds, anyways.
- The_Colonel 2y agoBut not every clock would be like that - only those clocks which don't show the seconds precision would use this rounding. The consequence of that would be that statements like "fireworks start at 12 AM" would mean two different points in time depending on how much precision your clocks have.
- fouronnes3 2y agoThat's true if you catch the exact moment the clock changes. If you don't, the only thing you know with a truncating clock is that the fireworks started 0 to 59 seconds ago. With a rounding clock, you know the starting point is within [-30, 30] from now. So on average, you're closer to the starting point when seeing the clock show 12AM. A good reason for truncating is that we have a strong bias against being late, but not really against being early.
- The_Colonel 2y ago> If you don't, the only thing you know with a truncating clock is that the fireworks started 0 to 59 seconds ago. More importantly, I know whether the designated point in time passed or not. If you have a submission deadline set at 14:00, the most important thing you care about is whether you made it or not. But what bothers me more is that this is inviting ambiguity into time definition. What 14:00 means (in addition to all the timezone complexity) now depends on the type of the clock you use. That's just bad. > A good reason for truncating is that we have a strong bias against being late, but not really against being early. TBH I don't understand what you're saying here.
- mongol 2y ago> With flooring, if you see 13:00 you know you are late I always though that you are late from 13:01. Common these days with Teams meetings etc. It seems most people join during the minute from 13:00 to 13:01.
- flerchin 2y agoI tell my kids this aphorism: Early is on-time. On-time is late.
- anal_reactor 2y agoEarly is on-time. On-time is late. Late is how most people behave.
- mikenew 2y agoShowing up early just makes other people feel like they did something wrong by showing up on time.
- synecdoche 2y agoIt could be argued that people can’t be made to feel anything, apart from pain. How people react, on the other hand, may be quite different.
- recursive 2y agoTrue. Probably wouldn't be a very good argument though.
- flerchin 2y agoOther people's feelings about a dimension don't change the dimension.
- lxgr 2y agoIn a social context, almost everything some people do changes how other people feel.
- wodenokoto 2y agoI think that’s the problem with the article - that it sticks to its guns. It starts with an outrageous statement, goes on to show that it’s actually correct. Then it relates it to similar things and instead of saying “yeah, just like we floor years and hours it makes sense to do it for minutes too, but it was fun to think about” it goes on to say “but for minutes this is bad” If it had backtracked and said “flooring is actually the better choice” I would have appreciated the article as a whole much more
- atoav 2y agoIt seems to me many people are so amazed by the fact they for once had an original thought that at this moment they stop caring whether it is actually a good one. It is crucial to maintain mental flexibility and one does that by thinking things through, killing your darlings, admitting when ideas are wrong or simply just mediocre. Only because it was me who had an idea doesn't mean I have to defend it at all cost. The idea isn't me.
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoI am sure this is not an original thought.
- circlefavshape 2y agoOne of the big downsides of the internet is the cold water it constantly pours on my idea of my own originality. Every time I think of a great idea I find someone else has already thought of it (well, almost every time)
- andy800 2y agoYour second example contradicts the first. "Sending a message" doesn't happen in an instant. There's always some latency, which can be significant in email systems (the most common, universally accepted way to send a message) and SMS. The goal in messaging is almost always not about the send time (who cares?), but the receive time, when it is available to be read. If the goal is to have the message received at 1:00, then, as you note in the second example, sending it precisely at 1:00:00.000 guarantees it will be received late. In any case, if you're that focused on intra-minute precision, you should probably be relying on clocks that incorporate seconds anyway.
- snowfarthing 2y agoThere have been times when my wife and I resorted to including send times, because the latency between our phones was ridiculously high. I really wish SMS and email would include both sent and received times, so that latency issues can be accounted for.