Math is hard, help with a comma or three

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Jhinx, Jun 29, 2021.

  1. Strawberry Augur

    These examples are just the examples that get most attention.

    But these conversion mistakes happen on a daily basis. The engineer who makes a plan for a construction and works in metric. But the contractor company who has to translate everything into imperial so the workers who are too lazy to learn metric, know what size carriage bolt to use.

    This results in mistakes on a daily basis. It's a miracle that buildings aren't falling down left and right considering how idiotic it is that many construction workers still work with imperial and the engineers with metric. At least some contractors have started to realize the need to learn their workers metric.
  2. Stymie Pendragon

    I was in 1st grade back in 76' when my teacher told me that metric is how things are to be measured from now on. Yeah, that didn't work for me. I can hold out my hands to show someone what a foot looks like. I do know that a meter is smaller than a yard which is just another piece of useless information swimming around in my noggin.

    10 based measurement does have a lot going for it though, but I guess I was a little too old to embrace it at the time, at 6 years old lol.
  3. Strawberry Augur

    It's hardly a big deal if someone measures their own height or weight in metric or imperial.

    But when you work in medicine and science, not learning metric costs lives.

    I hope I never have to read that story again of a handful of pediatric workers who didn't want to bother learning metric, resorting to using "tablespoons" as a measurement instead, until they overdosed a child on medication.
  4. Littlelegs Elder

    Lots of hills out there, this one is dumb. People die in gender reveal parties too after all, shall I link big articles about that to make a point? The exceptions prove the rule.

    It's interesting to note that OP's concern about 3 000 000 and 300 000 and the like is valid. And I for one will not stand by while errors are being made with multiples of 10. I shan't do it.
    Stymie and Elyssanda like this.
  5. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    I am not talking about the smaller units but the larger one. At least in my mind knowing the size of 1km is easier than knowing the size of 1 mile = 5280 feet or 1 sq km is easier than 1 sq acre = 43,560. The issue I am talking about is when you change units the conversion is almost never the same unlike in metric where it is always units of 10.
    Stymie likes this.
  6. Stymie Pendragon

    I get what you mean, but it's just something that's ingrained in me at this point, and many other Americans as well (Happy Independence day!)

    I work as a manufacturing engineer and most of what I deal with on a daily basis is small scale like .1mm = .003937in

    I remember this one time when I was young I was on a trip from Maine to Quebec with my grandfather and as we neared the border I saw a speed limit sign that said 100 and begged him not to drive his old pickup that fast.;)
  7. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    Nation wide, in the US, there are over 47,000 miles that make up the nation’s interstate system.

    Out of that, the state of Arizona stands out. Specifically, a 63-mile stretch in the southern part of the state.

    Interstate 19 is the country’s only continuous highway that lists distances in kilometers, not miles. Starting just north of the border at Nogales, Interstate 19 stretches 101 kilometers to Tucson.

    That is a whopping 63 miles. woo hoo.

    They tried to change it, either go back to regular miles, or change it all to metric but between no budget and huge opposition it stayed metric. All 63 miles!

    Not of import to anyone else unless you live near it and have to give out directions :D
    Nennius and Stymie like this.
  8. Arborer Lorekeeper

    I haven't played World of Warcraft in years but there used to be a bit of a scam there where sellers who were listing a cheap item that had lots of multiples (maybe arrows, or tradeskill items? I don't remember the details) would list them like this:

    235s
    235s
    235s
    235g
    235s
    235s
    235s

    Notice the one "gold" price in the midst of all the silver. Someone wanting to buy a bunch of the same item would just go "click click click" and next thing you know he'd grossly overpay for one of them.

    Could maybe be an innocent error on the seller's part... maybe. But it happened to me once and when I politely requested a refund I never got a response!

    Caveat emptor!
  9. Randel Flag Elder

    Someone yesterday was paying me 100k for a TA and handed me 1 mill ....

    I am not a tool I returned it.
    Stymie and Skuz like this.
  10. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    30-40 years ago they were listing everything on new signs in metric AND standard. At some point, 20-25 years ago they gave up, so only old dilapidated signs still show the km distances on the US highways. Weird.
  11. Strawberry Augur

    US companies already use metric for food packaging in the US. Any small substance that needs to be measured accurately is much easier in metric.

    Ingredients are all marked in metric. Grams, milligrams, micrograms.

    It's also much easier to have one measurement system when these companies export outside of the US. Having two systems for every package would be very cumbersome.

    [IMG]
    Skuz likes this.
  12. Strawberry Augur

    The reason why the US is the only country left using imperial is really hard to explain without invoking feelings of national pride. Which is really silly because metric competence would result in increased competence in science and medicine.

    [IMG]

    But the US is really not the worst offender. I would argue China is a much worse offender of relying on outdated systems.

    When Vietnam changed from Chinese characters to an alphabet, literacy rates skyrocketed. While China and Japan, that still use Chinese characters, claim their literacy rates are comparable to countries using a Latin alphabet, independent studies show this is not the case (The Chinese government defines literacy as knowing 950 characters, which isn't even enough to read a children's book). Literacy rates are much lower in China and Japan than they are in the West, especially when it comes to writing.

    Remembering 40,000 characters is apparently much harder than remembering 26. Who knew.

    [IMG]
    Skuz likes this.
  13. Tucoh Augur

    yyyymmdd 4life

    I'm comfortable with both celsius and farenheit, but it's the one part of imperial that's worth considering. You can represent the entire scope of suitable temps in 1 to 100, whereas it's more awkward in celsius. Any outdoor temps outside of that range are in "frigg off" territory.

    All the temps ive ever dealt with professionally were in celcius tho
  14. Jhinx Whimsical Chinchilla

    Some good suggestions here.

    I'm happy with any way to easily denote how large the number is, whether it be spaces, slashes, commas, periods, small flightless birbs.
  15. Jhinx Whimsical Chinchilla

    Any word on this Devs? Would love if you could implement it.
  16. ScreentimeInfinity Lorekeeper

    I don't care what they do, but they have to do something. When processing a giant transaction on the FV server, the numbers run underneath the platinum coin in the trade window. If your selling a 10 million plat item you can not see the first two numbers in the string. The box needs to widened to accommodate lets say a 100 million plat transfer for the future. I would also like to see the bazaar max price greatly increased so we can put our good stuff on the trader and avoid getting scammed. We occasionally have people that exploit this very problem by putting 1 or 2 mil in the window for a 10 or 20 million plat item.
    Jhinx likes this.
  17. Froglok Augur

    I like the idea. While Vendor prices use a decimal point system that represent Platiunum.GoldSilverCopper... most players only really care about the numbers before the Decimal (Platinum).

    However, in Bazaar, once you get beyond 4 or 5 digits, it can be hard to tell the actual price. The numbers are ran together after all, and small.

    Nothing is worse than thinking you just bought a 20K item only to later figure out it cost you 200K. Or trying to figure out if that item is marked at 1 Mil or 100K, 100K or 10K.

    So yes, commas in Bazaar, at least, would be great.
    Jhinx likes this.