On Monday 10 August 2009 12:34:52 Simon_Meng wrote:
> So how did 120 km/h become 119 km/h in the article?  It seems Anne Huang,
> author of the article must have converted the 120 km to 74.56 miles,
> rounded it to 74 miles and the reconverted it back and rounded it to 119
> km.

There are two ways to round 74.56 to 74, neither of which makes sense: Either 
you round down, which makes sense only with one-way tolerances, or you round 
to the nearest even number, which implies a ruler or scale marked in twos. 
There are measuring tapes marked in two-millimeter intervals, but rounding a 
calculated value like this is unusual. Whether rounded to the nearest 1, 5, 
or 25, 74.56 becomes 75. Rounding to the nearest 10 yields 70.

Pierre

Reply via email to