On Wed, 26 Jun 2002 12:57:06 Wizard of OS wrote: >one lil' example: > >I wanna go to hamburg from berlin. I know my car consumes 9 L/100 km on >highway. Hamburg is 250 km away what's my consumption? > >9 L x 2,5 = 22,5 L I dont need even a calculator > The above is indeed a good example, Wiz (well done! :-) ). Nonetheless, such exercise would be just as easy with l/Mm. In that case we just calculate 25% of 90, or divide 90 by 4!!! ;-)
>ISN'T it ez? >when you use km/L it makes it completely impossive to do it without >calculator!!! > >11,11 km/L >250 km to go > >250/11,11 > >some kinda impossible in mind to do > Well... It wouldn't be that tough actually to do it, but you'd need some skillful and creative trickery to get around it (which I usually try to when faced with "uncooperative" numbers like the above). For instance, I'd just note that 11.11 is actually 1/9, so I'd just multiply the 25 figure by 9 to come up with the exact same result (22.5). Evidently I'm skipping the decimal point worries here which to us who are used to it becomes sort of irrelevant since we do have an idea of what order of magnitude the result should come at... ;-) Now, IMHO the real question to ask here is more a one of *application* or usefulness. I.e. what is important for ordinary drivers to know when it comes to fuel consumption issues? If one wants to estimate how much fuel one would need when doing trips (as companies operating fleets of vehicles would), fine, I guess it's fair to say that l/Mm could be more convenient for that. But if all one is engaged in (like the overwhelming majority of us) is finding out how our car is doing when we "fill up" our tanks, certainly the km/l figure would definitely come much more handy, no? >now you maybe see the convenience of 100 km > So, "convenience" here is somewhat subjective and dependent on the *application* one is envisaging. Therefore, that's why after much careful thought and consideration I've decided to become a strong proponent of publishing *both* of these figures, km/l AND l/Mm! There certainly would be usage for both of these numbers and by doing so *every spectrum of usage* would be nicely covered! Comments?... Marcus Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail. Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com
