Dear reader,
Today I found a place on our website where we display the size of a recreational area in square kilometers. This is what I saw.
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This kind of reminds me of an interaction I had with a journalist who I was chatting with as she worked on a piece. It was about a refugee slum where a certain number of people lived in a certain number of square KM. The point was that it was a lot of people packed into a small amount of space.
But the math was weird. I don't remember the details, but conversions between miles and KM and multiplying squares and everything is just super unintuitive. It would have been very easy to make a mistake and move on. A false positive on correctness.
😰😰😰😰😰
In a total tangent, this also reminds me of the 500 mile email. The details are not similar really, but everyone should read that one. It's a great bug story.
I read this one, great story. Miles are insidious.
And the conversion is actually super easy.
1 km = 0.621 mi.
1 km2 = 0.386 mi2.
+1 for 500 mile email, fantastic story
On the bright side, at least you didn't discover the bug when it was 33.9+ million miles (54.6+ million kilometers) away.
Awesome. I knew the story, but completely forgot about it - and it's also about units. Thank you for reminding me!
Nice catch. :) But let me just remind you, that there is always a lot of Europeans in US (tourists for example), who would prefer to see square kilometers even when they're traveling. It is so obvious, that many companies forget about it and enforce settings by geo location. :)
Thanks for a nice post. As for myself, I love how such types of issues are eliminated with F# with the help of units of measure. You might want to check it out at some point
What a neat approach. Next time when starting a new personal project, I'll definitely consider F#. Thank you.
Unfortunately, here at work it is not possible.(
Gorgeous catch! I get those nagging little feelings about things too. I admit, I feel a little silly that I didn't get what was wrong w/ the code until you explained it, but I'm tired and on half my usual coffee intake, so mileage may vary (pun intended).
Hey Ben Halpern, y'all should really add one of those fancy "spoilers" expander boxes for stuff like this, so the answer can be hidden. I suspect people would really make a lot of use of that!
We need to go back to measuring things in leagues
Nice way of writing! :D I really enjoyed reading it! Keep up the good work!!
Neat post :) Having worked in maps, as soon as I saw "km2" I knew what was coming :D
Yeah, right? You just know.
Thanks for writing this, Elena.
I loved the story, and really enjoyed the unique writing style!
Aw, thank you, I'm really flattered about the style:)