Non-motoring > Somebody must have got their calculator out!	Miscellaneous
Thread Author: L'escargot	Replies: 24

New Wed 4 Apr 12 09:56   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - L'escargot

tinyurl.com/ckw3tcu Somebody must have got their calculator out to convert 1000 ft to 305m! Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 10:29   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Slidingpillar

Except it's 20cm less! Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 10:33   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - John H

>> tinyurl.com/ckw3tcu >> >> Somebody must have got their calculator out to convert 1000 ft to 305m! >> That somebody probably is a journalist who went to a "Uni" and/or who never learnt about orders of approximations. He/she is the same type of journalist who writes in the Telegraph today "sell a stake for $1.4bn (£881m)" - I wonder if later in the day when the article is updated the $ conversion to £ will change as the currency market fluctuates. Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 10:38   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - sooty123

I hesitate to ask, but what's wrong with it? Reply to this message | Report message       3

New Wed 4 Apr 12 10:44   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Dutchie

She landed the plane brave lady.Calculation not far out .Does it matter? Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 10:48   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Cliff Pope

She circled the airport "about 10 times". Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 10:52   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Dutchie

And landed the thing with her dead husband beside her.What are we on about here.? Confused .com. Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 10:56   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Slidingpillar

Still a brave lady though. As for orders of approximation, depends on the usage. A better report would have said, "an estimated 1000ft or approximately 300m." The bit I was commenting on was the fact that 1000ft is presented as 305m when in actuality, it's 304.8 and neither is really appropriate to a converted guess. Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 13:55   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - zookeeper

she landed it on one engine, i wonder if she managed to feather the dead engine and give it some opposite rudder all with her poor dead husband sitting next to her....the woman deserves a medal Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 16:56   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Iffy

...A better report would have said, "an estimated 1000ft or approximately 300m... No need for the extra two words, shorter and simpler to slap the nearest number of metres in brackets. No point in going into centimetres when we are talking hundreds of metres, and the distance itself - the skid - can only be an estimate. Reply to this message | Report message       1

New Wed 4 Apr 12 17:15   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - rtj70

Since 1000 feet is 304.8 metres... putting 300m in brackets is close enough for most. And the 1000 feet is approximate in the first place. Reply to this message | Report message       1

New Wed 4 Apr 12 21:21   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Crankcase

Have pity on those of us whose brains always read the small m as miles at first pass. Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 09:50   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - L'escargot

>> I hesitate to ask, but what's wrong with it? >> rtj70 hit the nail on the head in his post timed at 17:15. Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 10:09   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Focusless

>> >> I hesitate to ask, but what's wrong with it? >> >> rtj70 hit the nail on the head in his post timed at 17:15. No nail to hit IMO - prefer 305 thanks. Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 10:38   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - John H

>> No nail to hit IMO - prefer 305 thanks. >> Your forte is Arts rather than Science, I suspect. :) Mathematicians, Scientists, and Engineers are (or at least used to be) taught orders of approximation and the dangers of false accuracy and false precision. However some people, regardless of their discipline, can and do grasp the concept without having to be taught it. Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 10:42   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - sooty123

But it's a nice interesting story, I don't think it matters whether the 'orders of approxiamation' were used or not. Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 10:46   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Focusless

>> >> No nail to hit IMO - prefer 305 thanks. >> >> >> >> Your forte is Arts rather than Science, I suspect. :) Well they say software is more of an art than a science... :) Nah, I can take art in but don't ask me to create any. I see the 305m as an approximation of 1000ft, not of the length of the runway (or whatever it was), and as such 305m is just the right level of approximation for me. 300m sounds too vague - have they rounded to the nearest 100m? Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 10:51   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Zero

I can visualise 300m, I can't visualise 305 metres, unless you need the accuracy for technical reasons, its pretty non descriptive and carries less meaning than 300m. Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 10:57   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Number_Cruncher

>>the right level of approximation As none of us knows the level of approximation in giving the 1000 ft figure, none of us can say what the correct way to present the equivalent height in metres is. I do teach approximation to my students, and I get quite angry when they give me answers to 10 unjustifiable decimal places. Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 10:58   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Focusless

Don't really care what the correct way is - 305m tells me what I want to know. Reply to this message | Report message

New Wed 4 Apr 12 14:54   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - MJM

How's this for an approximation from our local school - >>Welcome to *************** school, a highly successful 11-18 mixed comprehensive with approximately 1514 pupils on roll. << Is there a pupil with a wooden leg who only wears it occasionally to warrant the approximation? Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 11:02   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - R.P.

It skidded down the runway for about 1,000ft (305m) before coming to a halt. For me the Imperial version is a sound descriptive - the metric conversion makes no sense in written English - "It skidded down the runway for about 305meters" is just plain silly. Last edited by: R.P. on Thu 5 Apr 12 at 11:02 Reply to this message | Report message

New Thu 5 Apr 12 11:55   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - rtj70

The fact that the story is saying the distance was 'about x feet' means it's an approximation. So to me, like others, 305m sounds too accurate... so I agree with 305m sounding silly. Reply to this message | Report message

New Fri 6 Apr 12 13:51   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - Ian (Cape Town)

>> He/she is the same type of journalist who writes in the Telegraph today "sell a >> stake for $1.4bn (£881m)" - I wonder if later in the day when the article >> is updated the $ conversion to £ will change as the currency market fluctuates. >> No. There'll be a benchmark pound-to-dollar amount which is used from start to finish of the paper. Unless the pound or dollar goes breasts-up during the day, in which case the figures will all be changed just before the paper goes off-stone. FT may do things differently, but in these days of the internetz etc, by the time the paper comes out, things will have changed anyway. My nightmare is dealing with changed rates - a story comes out that XXX footballer has been bought/sold for XX million pounds. Actually he was sold for YY Euros. Now, converting ZAR into quid gives a different answer to converting ZAR into Euros... Reply to this message | Report message

New Fri 6 Apr 12 15:07   Somebody must have got their calculator out! - L'escargot

I don't suppose it matters how far it skidded anyway. Reply to this message | Report message