Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle

hideshow 12 child comments

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[–] CapraObscura@lemmy.world 14 points 3 years ago (1 child)

This is one of the dumbest fucking trolls I've ever seen.

Congratulations? I guess?

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[–] new_acct_who_dis@lemmy.world 7 points 3 years ago

Honestly, I don't give a shit either way. Wish us 'mericans were on the same wavelength as the rest of the world, but we're awful in so many ways it doesn't even register.

However, this troll is gold and I think you're all sleeping on his genius

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[–] WhyIsItReal@lemmy.world 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

i’ve never heard of anyone using non-reduced fractions to measure precision. if you go into a machine shop and ask for a part to be milled to 16/64”, they will ask you what precision you need, they would never assume that means 16/64”+-1/128”.

if you need custom precision in any case, you can always specify that by hand, fractional or decimal.

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world -5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

But you can't specify it with decimal. That's my point. How do you tell the machine operator it needs to be precise to the 64th in decimal? "0.015625" implies precision over 15,000x as precise as 1/64th. The difference between 1/10 and 1/100 is massive, and decimal has no way of expressing it with significant figures.

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[–] WhyIsItReal@lemmy.world 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

sure you can, you say “i need a hole with diameter 0.25” +- 0.015625“”. it doesn’t matter that you have more sig figs when you state your precision

but regardless, that’s probably not the precision you care about. there’s a good chance that you actually want something totally different, like 0.25+-0.1”. with decimal, it’s exceptionally clear what that means, even for complicated/very small decimals. doing the same thing fractionally has to be written as 1/4+-1/10”, meaning you have to figure out what that range of values are (7/20” to 3/20”)

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world -2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

Having to provide a "+/-" for a measurement is a silly alternative to using a measurement that already includes precision. You're just so used to doing things a stupid way that you don't see it.

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[–] WhyIsItReal@lemmy.world 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

providing an arbitrarily non-reduced fraction is an even sillier alternative. the same fundamental issue arises either way, and it’s much clearer to use obvious semantics that everyone can understand

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world -1 points 3 years ago

It's not the same issue at all.

How do you represent 1/64th in decimal without implying greater or lesser precision? Or 1/3rd? Or 1/2 or literally anything that isn't a power of 10?

You're defending the practice of saying "this number, but maybe not because we can't actually measure that precisely, so here's some more numbers you can use to figure out how precise or measurements are"

How is that a more elegant solution than simply having the precision recorded in a single rational measurement?

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[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 8 points 3 years ago (1 child)

No measured value will be perfectly precise, so it doesn't make sense to use that as a criteria for a system of measurement. You're never going to be able to cut a board to exactly 1/3 of a foot, so it doesn't matter that the metric value will be rounded a bit.

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 0 points 3 years ago

Not "a bit". You can have a 9x difference in precision and be unable to record it.

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[–] JoeClu@lemmy.world 3 points 3 years ago

I'm scratching my head, wondering why all the downvotes.

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[–] Phantom3805@lemmy.world 3 points 3 years ago

This feels like such a niche reason to prefer fractional measurements.

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[–] MiddleWeigh@lemmy.world 1 point 3 years ago

I've always sucked at math tbh, but fractional measurements are my jam. It goes faster in my head and I can visualize things better.