2001-11-04 This is why it is so difficult to just convert back the figures seen in articles to SI. You don't know how far off the converted figures are, or if they are true. Unless one has a some understanding of the situation being described, it is determine what the original result may have been.
In Joe's case, we know that in other countries rational use of metric numbers would be the logical ones chosen, thus 30 km is correct and 28 km is wrong. But, not everyone is as intuitive as us on this subject. I'm sure the same thing can happen when a story is reported where a distance is say 200 m, the AP "converts" it to 200 yards, and someone else would then convert it back to 182 or 183 m. I sometimes wonder if the AP gets some type of joy out of this knowing they have created confusion with metric data. The only solution for this, if the AP refuses to amend its ways, is for other news sources not to use AP material or for those that report to the AP to demand that they keep the metric information intact. But, I can't see either of this happening. As long as the AP can get away with what they do, they will continue to do so no matter how much people like us complain. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph B. Reid" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, 2001-11-03 16:42 Subject: [USMA:15939] Re: I challenged the Associated Press > James Wentworth wrote at 01-10-01-03.41 > > >In international and science stories from Associated Press reporters, the > >original metric units supplied in the source material are almost invariably > >converted (often incorrectly) to the colloquial US units. > > After the Chernobyl disaster the Canadian Press reported that an exclusion > zone of 28 km radius had been declared around the site. That struck me as > a most unlikely dimension. I hypothesized that Associated Press had > divided the original figure of 30 km by the conversion factor of 1.6 giving > the answer of 18,75 miles, which they truncaed to 18 milws for publication. > Canadian Press copied the report but converted the figure of 18 miles back > to kilometres by multiplying by 1,6 giving the figure of 28.8 km, which > they truncated to 28 km for publication. > > Joseph B.Reid > 17 Glebe Road West > Toronto M5P 1C8 TEL. 416-486-6071 >
