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Ludicrous Precision: Difference between revisions
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* 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
{{quote|this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851)}}
=== Periodicals ===▼
* 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 °F.▼
* 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 50 km, to the same four significant figures, is nearer 31.09 miles than the stated 31.25), they also failed to realise (or willfully ignored) the fact that the percentage difference between 30 and 31.25, let alone that between 30 and 31.09, is well within the tolerance of mechanical speedometers. Plus there's the fact that if they'd used the other rule-of-thumb conversion (5 km approximately equals 3 miles), the whole basis for the silly article would have disappeared.▼
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
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== [[New Media]] ==
* Andrew Schlafly of [[Conservapedia]] and his [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Schlafly_Statistics enthusiasm for making up numbers.]
▲== Periodicals ==
▲* 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 °F.
▲* 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 50 km, to the same four significant figures, is nearer 31.09 miles than the stated 31.25), they also failed to realise (or willfully ignored) the fact that the percentage difference between 30 and 31.25, let alone that between 30 and 31.09, is well within the tolerance of mechanical speedometers. Plus there's the fact that if they'd used the other rule-of-thumb conversion (5 km approximately equals 3 miles), the whole basis for the silly article would have disappeared.
== Professional Sports ==▼
* Sprint times in professional sports are frequently measured to thousandths of a second by stopwatches operated by human hands—which are not precise to such small degrees. Worse, differences of a few thousandths or even hundredths of a second in dash times are often touted as being very significant, when, practically, differences of less than a tenth of a second in distance dashes are close to no difference at all.▼
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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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]]''. "I want that report in 18 seconds!"
* Exploited in an episode of ''[[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 Ludicrous Precision.
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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 lb (
* 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 [[w:Significant figures|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 0.005 and 0.05 as measurements, the second number has to be 0.050 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 0.5 cm off on the span of a beam). This is also part of the reason a lot of old-line engineers miss slide
* 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.▼
* Lawyers for Young in ''Young v. Hawaii'' complaining about Hawaii requesting a stay:
{{quote|Mr. Young has now been in the appeals process for approximately six years, two months and nine days.}}
▲=== Professional Sports ===
▲* Sprint times in professional sports are frequently measured to thousandths of a second by stopwatches operated by human hands—which are not precise to such small degrees. Worse, differences of a few thousandths or even hundredths of a second in dash times are often touted as being very significant, when, practically, differences of less than a tenth of a second in distance dashes are close to no difference at all.
▲* 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.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Dialogue]]
▲[[Category:Ludicrous Precision]]
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