Ludicrous Precision: Difference between revisions
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== Literature ==
* David Weber's ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' books are full of this. He often gives ship velocities to 6 significant digits, when those ships are accelerating at rates that make the last three digits change in the time it takes to read the number. On one occasion he had a character verbally give a "time to grav lance range" in hundredths of a second, and almost nobody in the series will say something like "about five minutes" when "two-hundred-ninety-three-point-two seconds" is more accurate.
* Played with in ''[[Sylvie and Bruno]]'', when Bruno estimates that there are "about a thousand and four" pigs in the field outside. When told he can't possibly be sure about the "four" part, he insists that that's the ''only'' part he's sure
* Used in [[Canon Discontinuity|at least one version]] of ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (novel)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]''. Justified by [[Rule of Funny]], and in particular in this case because it's coming from the narrator.
{{quote|Many stories are told of Zaphod Beeblebrox's journey to the Frogstar. Ten percent of them are ninety-five percent true, fourteen percent of them are sixty-five percent true, thirty-five percent of them are only five percent true, and all the rest of them are told by Zaphod Beeblebrox. }}
* Used for the opposite effect in ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]''. When asked by the judge during Tom Robinson's trial, Mayella Ewell gives her age as "nineteen-and-a-half." The fact that a nineteen-year-old still thinks of her age in halves serves to show that she doesn't get out as much as she should.
* In dialogue (internal or with other characters), [[Keith Laumer]]'s [[Bolo
* In ''[[Discworld/Going Postal|Going Postal]]'', Mr. Pump the golem berates conman Moist von Lipwig for his criminal lifestyle, citing that although he's never used violence, the deprivation of his victims has cumulatively killed 2.338 people. Later, Moist [[Lampshade Hanging|questions the accuracy of this]].
* Chapter 85 of ''[[Moby Dick]]'' deals with the question of whether the whale's spout is water or vapour, a question which has lasted from the beginning history until
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** And odd variation occurs in "Imperfection". Tuvok scans a destroyed Borg Cube and announces the presence of approximately 37 Borg drones. Paris immediately states that such an even number does not sound like an approximation. Tuvok then has to clarify that he's not counting bodies, but ''body parts''.
** Hull Integrity from ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]'' is just their replacement word for shields, which would lead to the ship being just fine [[Critical Existence Failure|until it hit 0%.]]
** Bashir became insufferable for this after it was revealed he was genetically engineered. Even his actor hated it. Most notably, he provides the likelihood of the success of the Dominion in the Dominion War to two decimal places. For reference, the Dominion War was a massive conflict involving four of the most powerful organizations in the galaxy. He also used
** Heck, the whole "stardate" system was merely another opportunity for writers to ''sound'' like they were indulging in this trope.
** Mocked by [[Eddie Izzard]]. "According to these instruments, we're all going to die in .2 of a second. Oh, should I have said that earlier?"
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== Print Media ==
* Journalists are very prone to treating opinion polls as more precise than they really are. The time before any election will see many such cases. For example, if one particular poll suggests candidate A has 43% support while candidate B has 41%, many newspapers will quickly conclude that A is leading. This ignores the fact that even the most scientific polls will often have a 3% margin of error. [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/fakeprec.html See] [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive042010.html#04242010 the] [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive042010.html#04072010 Fallacy] [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive122009.html#12092009 Files] [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive092009.html#09302009 for] [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive072008.html#07122008 several] [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive062008.html#06262008 examples]. A more in-depth view of the phenomenon can be found [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/readpoll.html here].
* And not understanding notions of margin of error and significant digits generally. Expect 3000 K to become precisely 5923.4
* If there's a chart, [[Viewers are Morons|it won't have error bars]]. Ever.
* The ''Daily Mail'' (the British newspaper which caters for the tinfoil-hat brigade) once ran an anti-SI-units article claiming that Britain would soon have to face "31¼" MPH speed limits. Apart from the error of assuming that the rule-of-thumb conversion (8 kilometres ''approximately'' equals 5 miles) is an exact one (the correct conversion of
== Sports ==
* Sprint times in professional sports are frequently measured to thousandths of a second by stopwatches operated by human
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== Web Comics ==
* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' is about [[Mad Scientist
{{quote|'''Agatha:''' ''(about an overdose of [[Psycho Serum|funny water]])'' I believe another forty-five point three seconds, and I would have ''exploded'' or something.}}
* In ''[[Bob and George]]'', during the Fifth Game arc, Mega Man wonders who the next master is (after he had cut Gyro Man to ribbons), and then come to a card that says "Crystal Man" and the odds of it answering Mega Man's question; 1 in 2^24,036,583.
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{{quote|"Calm down, Dnerd, it's just playacting."
"Playacting? Playacting is a compound intransitive verb..." }}
* In one episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', Homer hears that the average man lives to be 76.2 years old, exclaiming that he's 38.1 years old. The best part is that he's
* This is J. Jonah Jameson's gimmick in ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man|The Spectacular Spider Man]]''. "I want that report in 18 seconds!"
* Exploited in an episode of ''[[The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius|The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius]]'', when Jimmy came up with an idea to get rid of his robotic servants made mainly to help him with bullies, since they did their job so well, he became hugely unpopular. When Jimmy said that pi equaled to 3, the robots tried to [[Mouthful of Pi|correct him]], exploding before they achieved
* ''[[The Angry Beavers]]'': Daggett achieves this while hiding under the floorboards.
{{quote|'''Daggett:''' A bug... two bugs... four bugs... ''(explodes out through the floor)'' AAAAH! 4023 BUGS!}}
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* When combined with [[Blind Idiot Translation]], this trope may lead to interesting conversions where a person may proclaim that something is e.g. "approximately 9.144 meters away" or "weighing at least 90.718474 kilograms".
* Some translated cookbooks originally using Fahrenheit scale will tell you to set your oven at a Celsius temperature of 1 degree precision, or vice versa.
* The above two problems led to a fair amount of bafflement with American editions of some of Phaidon's cookbook line, especially their stupendously popular Silver Spoon books; since Phaidon frequently doesn't include metric measurements in their American editions, you will frequently be asked for the seemingly random quantity of 2 1/4
* Guinness claims the perfect double-pour of its draught beer takes 119.53 seconds. Apparently if you take that extra .47 seconds for an even 2 minutes you've ruined your beer entirely.
* In Scientific Fields and especially Physics the use of Significant Figures is a necessary item to understand how science works in general, based off the variations between measuring devices and understanding margin of error. If you are measuring something to the thousandth decimal place, having a reading that just goes to the tenth decimal place is an incongruity (if you are using the same device you can't have both .005 and .05 as measurements, the second number has to be .050 or something with that added decimal place). All that said, unless you are going into something like particle physics there is almost no real world need to be that precise (i.e. a house isn't going to collapse if you are .5
* Football (soccer) suffers a bit from this as the rules were originally written in Imperial measurements but are now administered in Metric units. For example the goals are specified as being 7.32m x 2.34m that being the equivalent of the old eight yards wide by eight foot high.
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