Dear Bill, Another 'point-of-order'...:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:29:48 Bill Potts wrote: >Marcus Berger wrote: >"Say a worker spent 1h25min on a job which pays him 8 $/h. How much money >should he be paid for that amount of work?" > >That's easy -- $12. ??? Absolutely NOT!? I doubt any company would be sloppy to that degree in considering 5 minutes "irrelevant"! Can you imagine how much money that would cost the business if extended to EVERY other worker??? Sorry, pal, but I can't quite honestly agree with your "rounding" answer above. > It's unlikely that his/her pay would be calculated to a >resolution of 5 min. No, it's not! In practically EVERY business I've had the chance to work for in my 25-year career so far I'm yet to see ONE that would do such rounding *across the board*! Perhaps in isolated fashion they might (like when retrenching, firing...), but hardly as a matter of policy/habit. >... Costing a job for accounting purposes is, of >course, another issue -- probably not involving manual calculations. > Ah-ha! Bingo! But THAT's what I was getting and referring to, Bill. >In any case, there's only one calculation, with your illustrated one >reducing to 8*(85/60). ?? Not really (but good try though...). First the 85 DOES require conversion from 1h25min, there simply is NO escape, as much as it might be "easy" to come up with that value, Bill. Just to convince you of that, let's assume a larger number then (one that would not lend itself to such "easy result", say, 86h25min: You still have to do two calcs: 86 x 60, then add this result to 25 *separately*! Total: 2 calcs! > If the person calculating the pay doesn't know that 1 >h 25 min is 85 min, he/she is in the wrong job. > That was not the point, Bill. Evidently my example had very simple easy numbers, but the thing could be "messy" if numbers were larger (like in my other example above). In any case, the point of the matter is simple. Once you "abandon" or delve into our time construct there IS ALWAYS some conversion business to deal with. The use of a decimal time construct would finally do away with most of its complexity (as much as one might still insist that 'but, 60-60-24 is soooo easy'...). Please note, this is *technically* so! The fact that the conversion factors are "simple/easy" are irrelevant to that aspect of the issue. >Regarding your percentime hours, conceptually that's really nothing new. ? But who said it was (except for a few aspects of it in terms of how the *overall* proposal was laid out)?... :-) That has never been the point. >However, there's no need to change the length of the hour or screw around >with the second.. > I say there is though! What I'm trying to achieve here is decrease the level of complexity of our present very flawed time construct framework to a one much more in line with SI concepts. >I seem to remember seeing time clocks calibrated in hours and hundredths. >... They're >perfectly normal hours..., with no >mention of minutes or seconds. The worker clocks on to the job at, say, >09:00. The starting time stamp will be 09.00 (decimal point, not colon). >Then he clocks off after 85 min. The time stamp will say 10.42. The pay, in >dollars, is then 8*(10.42-9.00). > True. Pratt & Whitney Canada where I worked appeared to have used this concept (but not to that degree of accuracy - one decimal place instead of two as in your example). However, EVEN if this is done internally, the disadvantage of the framwork itself remains as people STILL use minutes, seconds and hours when reckoning time. Besides, quite frankly, chances of the general population deciding to move to decimalization of hours to do away with that? ZERO! As long as watches continue to be manufactured with them people will continue to make use of them. It's a losing war! >There's no reason a foreman's own analog watch shouldn't also be >dual-calibrated -- hours and minutes and hours and hundredths. > Well... Tell that to watch manufacturers, Bill. They'll turn a blind ear to your proposal, I'm sure... >All of the above is, of course, irrelevant if the worker clocks in and out >at some kind of online scanning device, using an ID card and a job card, for >example. It's amazing what can be done with software. <g> > True, but again, you seem to be missing the point, Bill. It's not *technology* the bottleneck, my friend, it's **US, people**, who ultimately may HAVE to do calcs without technology help/aid!!! Let's face it, if the world ever moved to TOTAL TECHNOLOGY (I'm using a metaphor here with the movie Total Recall...) the discussion about adopting the SI system would be totally irrelevant because one can program computers to do ANYTHING. And considering the speed of computers, who would care if it takes 1 attosecond faster to do it with SI??? True, there would be the development costs to do so, but these are ONE-time investment capital expenditures, hardly reason *enough* to consider a move to SI! >Now, as I've dealt entirely with a unit (h) accepted for use with SI, we're >back on topic. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? >... :-) I've always enjoyed Bill's great sense of humor, one of his very admiring qualities! Still love ya, pal (honestly)! :-) But thanks for trying to... "save my neck" when continuing this thread. Really appreciated. Cheers, Marcus ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
