Comments on: Innumerate Guardian Hack

By: PaulH

PaulH — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:44:58 +0000

@MikeW Oh don’t go there. Once Jo Public cottoned onto kilo, mega and giga in the bytes context, the billion=giga was a certainty.

By: MikeW

MikeW — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:52:12 +0000

@pv: not unanimously !!

By: pv

pv — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:11:05 +0000

@MikeW: I thought the UK had now conceded etymological defeat and officially adopted the US form of billion?

By: MikeW

MikeW — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:05:12 +0000

“Ignore the difference between US and Imperial gallons for a moment” – and ignoring the difference between US and the “etymologically more correct” [OED] British billions …

By: So Much For Subtlety

So Much For Subtlety — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:17:54 +0000

AntiCitizenOne

I create databases.

Three numbers interest me.

Zero.
Exactly and Always One.
More than One.

===

Which one do you use to calculate your pay?

By: AntiCitizenOne

AntiCitizenOne — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 23:54:58 +0000

I create databases.

Three numbers interest me.

Zero.
Exactly and Always One.
More than One.

By: Kay Tie

Kay Tie — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 21:54:55 +0000

“What’s an “order of magnitude”? Is it like a knighthood? Or is it like an order of nuns?”

It’s a medal awarded to a Hero of the Left who broke ten times as many eggs as the Guardian reported.

By: Guardianista

Guardianista — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:28:37 +0000

What’s an “order of magnitude”? Is it like a knighthood? Or is it like an order of nuns?

By: maguro

maguro — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:53:14 +0000

Yeah, I live in the US so I know about lawn sprinklers. Still, I doubt many households are using 27,000 gallons per month.

Normally, I don’t water the grass in the summer but I was trying to sell my house last July so I watered like crazy to keep the lawn alive. My July water bill was $320 for 11,000 gallons, it’s hard to picture many people dropping $1K a month on water.

About 75% of the people in my subdivision let the lawn go brown in the summer. Small sample, I know, but it does make me think they were averaging total US water use across the number of households.

By: maguro

maguro — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 15:32:12 +0000

325,000 per day seems rather high. Assuming a household size of 4, this equates to roughly 560 gallons per person per day. 100 gallons per person per day is typically used when calculating requirements for private wells and such.

Does the average include industrial and agricultural use as well?

Tim adds: Yes, I think so, I think it’s the total water required in a water basin per household. But don’t forget, most of the US uses sprinklers, at least in summer. I once wrote a piece for a California newspaper on subsidy to reservoirs and irrigation systems and I recall them explaining one acre foot as the average usage of two California households.

By: Kay Tie

Kay Tie — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:00:11 +0000

Actually, I’ve been racist. Trolls are much smarter than I gave them credit for. From “Men At Arms”:

“In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three . . . many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of higher numbers. They don’t realize that many can be a number. As in: one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, LOTS.”

By: JuliaM

JuliaM — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 13:24:23 +0000

I thought it was four numbers: ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘many’ and ‘lots’…

By: Kay Tie

Kay Tie — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 11:01:09 +0000

I think it’s Discworld trolls. They have three numbers: “one”, “two” and “many.”

Try going through one of Polly’s pieces and substitute these for any figure. You’ll find it makes a lot more sense that way (many percent more sense, in fact).

By: Mark Wadsworth

Mark Wadsworth — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:19:03 +0000

They must belong to the class of people who struggle with numbers larger than 100 because they are ‘too big’.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7268663.stm