4 ms·
But 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 tha
by The_Colonel 2y ago
But 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.