On Wed, 26 Jun 2002 20:03:03 Wizard of OS wrote: >what I forgot! > >division is for many people much harder than multiplication! ... That's true, Wiz. However, please consider that l/Mm still involves divisions (so many liters *per* megameters of distance)... Even though one would most of the time, when using this particular ratio, multiply a certain distance to travel by the l/Mm value to come up with the number of liters necessary for a given trip.
Again, certain ratios lend themselves better than others *depending* on the application in question. l/Mm ratios would not be helpful when filling up a gas tank. Here one would *have* to make a division, except that in the case of km/l that... "division" would be more easily calculated (meaning that perhaps one could do without the use of a calculator for that) due to the fact that cars go much farther (larger number) on a per liter of fuel basis (except for F1 or Indy cars that may consume a liter or less per kilometer driven!... ;-) ), so it's sort of... "natural" to divide the km figure by the liter one. (Note: getting figures like drove 468 km, filled gas tank with 36 l would yield 234 by 18, 117 by 9, or 13 km/l as end result. If one did the opposite, 36 divided by 468, or 0.468 for Mm, please see how the mental process would be, 36000 by 468, 18000 by 234, 9000 by 117, which is much more elaborate and challenging to do without the use of a calculator - too many significant digits to work with, especially for the division itself, 117 compared to just 9!... Usually this would be true even if one used rounding in both legs, like treating 468 as 470, etc) Marcus Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail. Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com
