Pat et al:
Let's clarify the distinction between accuracy and precision.
Two decimal place odometer readout is precision but it says nothing about
how accurate that readout number is.
Stan Doore
----- Original Message -----
From: Martin Vlietstra
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2009 4:18 PM
Subject: [USMA:42559] Re: An Associated Press article in today's Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
I have never seen such a feature on a car, but then I am not an expert in
motoring matters. Having said that, I am sure that making two decimal places
available on kilometre-only dashboards would encourage [some] people to measure
distances using their cars.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Pat Naughtin
Sent: 25 January 2009 20:53
To: U.S. Metric Association
Cc: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:42558] Re: An Associated Press article in today's Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
Dear Martin,
The odometer had two decimal places. It was reading to an accuracy of 10
metres. To operate this feature my friend had to switch something under the
dash. He normally operated it with only one decimal place; i.e. with an
accuracy of 100 metres.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Heelong, Australia
On 2009/01/26, at 3:29 AM, Martin Vlietstra wrote:
Pat
Two decimal places on its odometer? I have never seen that before, though I
have seen may odometers with one decimal place. OK, pieces of land in the
Aussie outback are big and I would happily accept that you meant two
significant figures. J
Regards
Martin
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Pat Naughtin
Sent: 24 January 2009 20:30
To: U.S. Metric Association
Cc: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:42468] Re: An Associated Press article in today's Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
Dear Jim,
A year or two ago (and I think that I reported it here at that time) a friend
asked me how he could check the size of a piece of rural land that his daughter
wanted to buy. As he had a fairly new car, I asked if it had the facility to
measure kilometres and to use two decimal places on its odometer. It did, so we
drove to one corner of this fairly rectangular property, set the odometer to
read zero, drove along one fence line, and noted the distance. We did the same
for another side of the property and then multiplied to find the area that we
reported as hectares.
I recall that the selling agent had described the property in his advertising
(using acres) as about 30 % larger that it was in reality. Knowing the ture
area gave my friend's daughter considerable negotiating leverage.
On the issue of your school's parking lot, I have often thought (but I have
not done this yet) that a hectare marked out as a square on a school property
could be a useful educational asset. Other than seeing its size, to run around
it is 400 metres, along one side is 100 metres, its diagonals should both be
141.421 for budding Pythagoreans to measure to the nearest millimetre. You mat
remember that I wrote about this in a one-page article called A metric
playground at http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/MetricPlayground.pdf
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia
On 2009/01/25, at 6:31 AM, James Frysinger wrote:
Well, I know that my farm is 100 ha in area. That's a square kilometer. I've
used this figure and have discussed hectares in my weekly columns in the local
newspaper of record (The Mountain View).* As I recall, we determined that the
high school parking lot was 0.5 ha in size. So, I would hope that many of the
residents of Van Buren County TN are at least slightly conversant with hectares.
We live east of McMinnville TN (which is in Warren County). On the west side
of McMinnville is a community called Morrison. In Morrison is an automotive
parts supplier called Yorozu Automotive Tennessee. Their web page gives the
size of their land area and their building in square meters only. Knowing how
many square meters are in a hectare, I can easily see that their land area is
just under 25 ha, or about one-fourth of the size of my farm.
http://www.yorozu-corp.co.jp/en/point/yat.htm
Jim
* I'm taking a temporary break in the writing of this column.
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped
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