3 ms·
2.4% relative error is not bad.
by bikeshaving 11mo ago
2.4% relative error is not bad.
- pastor_williams 11mo agoReminds me of Babbage making allowance for meter. """ ... it is said that he [Babbage] sent the following letter to Alfred, Lord Tennyson about a couplet in "The Vision of Sin": Every minute dies a man, Every minute one is born I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that in the next edition of your excellent poem the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows: Every minute dies a man, And one and a sixteenth is born I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre. """ Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines
- zahlman 11mo agoWouldn't "one and a sixth" be more accurate in both respects?
- cbhl 11mo agoShouldn't it be the other way around if the population is increasing? Every minute one is born = 1440 born/day, every minute and a sixteenth ~= 1335 dead/day for a net population increase of 105/day.
- BrenBarn 11mo agoIt means that in every minute, one and a sixteenth of a man is born.