• Glide@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    This is actually a super fascinating example of the way data can be displayed in a technically correct way to lead the viewer to completely invalid conclusions.

    • alekks09
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      1 year ago

      It’s even more fascinating how everyone is seriously debating over this meme

  • Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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    Ackchyually

    Fever is not 100F. A fever is defined as 100.4F. Why 100.4 when 100 is a much easier to remember and handle number? Because fever is defined in humans as 38C, and that converts to 100.4F.

    • BeardedSingleMalt@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s been a while but I think they tried to establish 100F as the average human body temperature. But after they established that baseline turns out they were off by 1.4 degrees and couldn’t change it.

      • gentooer@programming.dev
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        People’s body temperature used to be higher a century ago, but I think it was less then 1°C.

        EDIT: Apparently since the early 1800s, men’s body temperature changed about 0.59°C and women’s about 0.32°C.

      • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You’re right. April 8th 2000 Christopher Walken caught a fever that changed the course of history forever. He had a fever and the only cure was more cow bell.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      That’s a sigfig error. A fever is 38C, which is 2 significant digits. Converting to 100° F goes up an order of magnitude so you get a free sigfig, but unless the original number was 38.0C, you don’t get that 0.4, you’re implying precision that the original measurement never gave you.

        • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          But the fever definition wasn’t that precise. They took the average temperature, 36.88 C, rounded it up to 37 C, and somewhat arbitrarily defined a fever as 1 C above the (rounded) average. Which is perfectly fine, but it means the equivalent in Fahrenheit is 100, not 100.4.

    • Kusimulkku
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      A fever is defined as 100.4F

      Who defines it like that? I’m asking because I wouldn’t be surprised if the definition differs between orgs

      • cantsurf
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        It’s actually an irrational number, but for most purposes 100.4159F is a perfectly reasonable approximation.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Saturday Night Live actually had a good sketch about this a few weeks ago:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk

    Washington: "We fight for a nation where we choose our own laws… choose our own leaders… and choose our own systems of weights and measures.

    I dream that one day, our proud nation will measure weights in pounds, and that 2000 pounds shall be called a ton."

    Rebel: “And what will 1000 pounds be called sir?”

    Washington: “Nothing. Cause will have no word for that.”

    Washington: “Distance will be measured in inches, feet, yards and miles. 12 inches to a foot!”

    Rebel: “12 feet to a yard…”

    Washington: “If only it were so simple. 3 feet to a yard.”

    Rebel: “And how many yards to a mile?”

    Washington: “Nobody knows.”

    Rebel: “Ok, how many feet to a mile?”

    Washington: “5280, of course! It’s a simple number that everyone will remember.”

  • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    wait 100 F is only 38 degrees?

    Wow that’s funny. I’ve seen so many people complain about extreme heat below 100 F.

    I get that what you’re not used to is difficult but like 38 degrees is a relatively ordinary (now) summer day for me.

    From how people spoke about it I thought 100 F was more lile 45

    • dukepontus@sh.itjust.works
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      I think that if the air is moist enough 38 degrees will overheat the body and kill it. Because the human body sweats to lose heat.

      So some regions on earth are probably less pleasant when the temperature rises. While other regions are more tolarable for humans.

      So there might be a reason why some people complain that they suffer from the heat. There could also be other reasons like their living conditions. A lack of ac and water, or living in a urban heat hell.

      Lets not trivialize experiences of people who suffer.

      • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Oh yeah they open up libraries near me cause otherwise people might cark it.

        I’m not trivialising anything, but outside of the tropics you don’t need AC to survive those temps. Just keep wetting yourself down and stay out of the sun and you’ll be right. Unless you’re not in a good state prior.

        • bouh@lemmy.world
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          That’s why we’re starting to use wet bulb temperature to measure these things. This is the temperature measured with the measuring bulb of the thermometer wet, so it accounts for wind and humidity, and it reflects how humans would feel and survive.

          38°C wet bulb is a deadly temperature. Not like you may die if you are unlucky or have specific condition, but like healthy you adult humans die in this weather. Because wind and humidity are such that your body cannot cool itself.

          In more temperate or dry places the heat should not be an underestimated danger either. But indeed the danger comes more at 40°C and higher and specific circumstances (stupidity being one of them).

          • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            you could still survive by immersing yourself in cool water but yeah.

            I think we had a 48 the other year with like 70% humidity and that was interesting. At one point I tried to get something done in the sun and almost immediately started experiencing heat stroke. I ended up going into the bush and lying down in a creek for a while. A surprising number of people had the same idea, it was almost nice except for the whole “wow the Apocalypse is starting” thing.

            • bouh@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              You can survive with many external means. But that’s the thing: you need external means to survive because you cannot survive otherwise in this environment.

              And yes, even in dry weather doing work in direct sun when temperature is over 40C is madness. Even a healthy adult can die in this environment. You should at the very least have proper garments and drink a lot.

        • Thrashy@lemmy.world
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          Keep in mind that a large chunk of the United States is considerably closer to the tropics than Europe is. Washington TC is on roughly the same latitude as Lisbon or Ibiza is. It’s not tropical, but climatically it’s still considered sub-tropical, and large chunks of the country have the summer heat and humidity to prove it.

          • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            I’m not from Europe. I’m from Australia.

            ATM I live in temperate rainforest, have spent time in tropical heat up in northern QL.

            Until the air gets saturated a lot of ability to cope is a combo of adaptation and conditioning. I wear jeans all year round pretty much and generally don’t run into problems as long as I’m drinking water. People less use to heat don’t move as much blood to their perpheries, probably don’t drink anywhere near enough water, and aren’t used to feeling comfortable in wet clothing (from sweat or from wetting yourself down).

            I spent some time in Thailand and felt like I had found my people when it was a 30 degree day and I put on a jumper, went outside and saw many others doing the same!

          • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            Actually Europe’s weather is pretty analogous to the Midwest, thanks to an ocean current dumping lots of warm water to their north. Although that might be changing soon idk

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        I live in a place that has -40°C winters and +40°C summers now 👍

        God I sure do love global warming

      • TheFriendlyArtificer@beehaw.org
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        Montana, here.

        Nothing quite like when it hits -45°F and you have to start closing off rooms and stuffing blankets into registers and doorway cracks.

        Any kind of outdoor airflow can burn so bad that skin necrosis can begin in just 5 minutes.

        Summer in Arizona is shitty. Winter in the Northern Rockies will straight up murder you.

        • Droechai
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          You shouldnt let the house go below 14-isch degrees since that would create kondensation that might hurt the structure or promote fungal growth. My house is between 15 to 20 degrees in winter and at 15 I can feel my body stiffen due to cold

          • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            If I had a choice mate I wouldn’t let it haha. I live in Australia, we make houses that don’t qualify as tents in the rest of the world.

            No real insulation (tiny amount in roof but downlights punch a hole through it), single glazed windows, doors that don’t seal. Power costs too much to run heating :') it’s good shit.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                When I moved to Los Angeles, I opened a bank account and while chatting with the bank employee, I found out she’d never seen snow up close. She’d only ever seen it on the mountains in the distance. That boggled my mind.

              • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                I have had friends from colder places come stay and say they’ve never felt as bitterly cold as winter in Sydney.

                When I spent some time in the snowfields in aus I was actually warm. Turns out if you build houses properly you don’t even really need much heating. Residual heat from cooking and body heat hangs around for a long time, we’d only light the fire mornings and evenings.

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
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      Ah yes the obligatory smug comment whenever anyone brings up temperature even tangentially.

      • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Oh relax, it’s just funny. You’re welcome to have a giggle when I bitch about it being 18 and you’re like 18? that’s 64! I only heat my sauna to 66!

    • RobotsLeftHand@lemmy.world
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      100F in Houston is a completely different beast than 100F in San Diego. Shade will actually help you San Diego. Nothing will help you in Houston.

        • vsh
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          10 months ago

          Removed by mod

          • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            There are like 1000 permanent residents :p

            Nice place but, good lake, near good mountains, pleasant bushland around.

            I stay sometimes, it’s very timeless. Doesn’t feel like it’s changed much from when I was a kid.

            • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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              Houston is the opposite of all those things. Its beaches consistently rank as having the highest fecal contamination in the country. Be glad you know nothing of it.

    • bermuda@beehaw.org
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      It really depends on humidity. Humid heat is typically worse and can be really draining both mentally and physically. Dry heat is much more tolerable for humans. As a person who’s experienced both I can concur, the 100F humid heat was borderline horrific.

      38C/100F is probably fine (relatively) in Arizona but in Florida it’ll be pretty terrible. Like when I was in the south for a week it was 98F and the walls were sweating.

  • Mossy Feathers (She/They)@pawb.social
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    Tbh I don’t really get why people get upset about mm/dd/yyyy vs dd/mm/yyyy. Is it a little weird? Sure, but personally, saying “July 4th, 1776” feels as natural as “the 4th of July, 1776”. The former is more formal, the latter is more casual.

    • Bonehead@kbin.social
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      People don’t get upset about saying the date in whatever format. They get upset when you write it in that format without specifying, so that you don’t know if 07/04/1776 is July 4th or April 7th.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          What’s especially bad is things that are meant for an international audience. Like the 2023 Miami Formula 1 race was held the weekend of the 5th to the 7th of May. But, say you didn’t know that and you see that the date is specified as: 05/07/2023. Is that a race in May or July? It’s Formula 1 so the audience is probably mostly European so the European order makes sense. But, it’s a race in the USA so the US order makes sense.

          It really sucks when to decode a date and time you have to first figure out who the target audience for the information is, then use that to help decode the information.

    • Eagle0600@yiffit.net
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      One word: Ambiguity. We need to either have a standard and stick to it, or a small handful of standards that cannot be confused for each other. DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY can be confused for each other, so the nonsensical MM/DD/YYYY should move over and make room for DD/MM/YYYY, or we should drop both and just use YYYY-MM-DD.

        • Kusimulkku
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          While it’s fine now, it used to be pretty disgusting too

          ISO date formats

          Fooking disgusteen

      • Robmart
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        Or DD-MMM-YYYY. Like 05/OCT/2005, which is my favorite if I don’t need it to be entirely numerical.

        • Eagle0600@yiffit.net
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          That’s fine because it’s unambiguous. If I’m using another standard and you’re using that, I can correct it without having to think about it.

    • Crimsonknee@lemmy.world
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      It’s not about saying it. It has to do with ordering it by size of time unit. Like I don’t write the time as 43:12:19 to denote 43 minutes and 19 seconds past midday do I.

        • vind@lemmy.world
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          ISO8601 is the best format and the international standard to denote date and time.

          2023-11-21T00:34:2

          • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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            I’m not sure I would agree with that. ISO-8601 is ambiguous, and very difficult to parse. For example, here are a couple valid ISO-8601 strings. Could you let me know what they mean?

            P1DT1H
            R10/2021-208/P1Y
            T22.3+0800
            22,3
            2021-W30-2
            2021-W30-2T22+08
            P1Y
            20
            

            Taken from here. My favorite is the last one (20). If someone just wrote 20 and told you to parse it using ISO-8601, what would you get? Hour? It could even be century (ie. 2023%100)!!

            So I would argue that ISO-8601 is just a wee bit too flexible. Personally, I like RFC 3339 just a bit more…

            Edit: that said, I would definitely agree that something along the lines of 2021-07-27T14:20:32Z is better than any regularly accepted alternative, and I pretty much format my dates that way all the time.

            • jan_Melisa055@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 year ago
              1. A period of one day and one hour.
              2. A period of one year, ten times, from the 208th day of 2021.
              3. Ten hours and 18 minutes pm (I’m not sure about this one) on UTC+08:00 (China, for example).
              4. IDK.
              5. The 2nd day of the 30th week of 2021.
              6. Same as above, but at 22:00 in China, probably.
              7. A period of one year.
              8. IDK.
        • lad@programming.dev
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          Yes, and it is used only with dashes instead of slashes. This is also how date is written when you want alphabetical sorting to work on the date, too

        • Crimsonknee@lemmy.world
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          Not necessarily. Size of time unit doesn’t explicitly mean largest to smallest. For human comprehension day first makes sense because that’s the most significant piece of data usually. Likewise for time of day the hour is the most significant piece of data.

          Though for computer comprehension, absolutely yyyy/mm/dd is best hands down.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      but personally, saying

      I don’t understand why it matters how you say the date vs. how it’s written with slashes.

      If someone asks you the time, and you look at your watch and it says 11:45, you could just answer “eleven forty five”, but depending on the context you might just say “It’s noon” or “It’s almost noon” or “It’s a quarter to noon”. 11:45 is how you get the information into your brain. How you process that information and how you pass it on depends on the context.

      The best date format is clearly ISO-8601, YYYY-MM-DD. In that format, US independence day is 1776-07-04. But, you don’t need to say it as “seventeen seventy six, seventh month, fourth day”. You can say “July 4th, 1776” or “The 4th of July, 1776”.

    • wander1236@sh.itjust.works
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      I don’t really care which way it goes, it just gets confusing if both month and date are 12 or lower and the format wasn’t specified ahead of time

      • ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρє@lemmy.sdf.org
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        Yeah. Had issues getting ID when I first came to US. They mixed up my date of birth, and I needed to go get it corrected. I didn’t even notice it until I almost missed a flight trying to use that ID, which didn’t match with their system. Fortunately I also had my passport with me.

    • Tau@sopuli.xyz
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      Because when usually dates formatted on number follow a descending or ascending order. Year -> Month -> Day or Day -> Month -> Year.

      mm/dd/yyyy is:

      – Month <- Day | Year <-

      It’s not only strange but is also not easy to parse and can be confused with dd/mm/yyyy

    • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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      Because they’re teenagers. In the real world nobody actually gives a fuck. Call me weird, but the different formats have never caused me a single instant of confusion in my entire life.

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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        Yup. I use ISO 8601 for any record keeping, but much like how I don’t bother with good spelling and grammer it doesn’t matter in comments on the internet

      • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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        As an American immigrant in Germany, I encounter it somewhat regularly and it still doesn’t matter.

        It was a bit of a problem when they thought I forged my covid vaccination card, because I got a shot on January tenth or something. I would then explain that I’m American and we do that. 80% of the time, they had no more questions, 20% of the time I’d show my drivers license birthday for proof (luckily I was born after the 12th).

        The things that are actually problematic are the unknown tools used for my dental work (my implant screw is going to need to get a custom screwdriver made for it), and understanding temperature at an intuitive level. I understand the common weather numbers, but do I want coffee that’s 55 degrees or 70 degrees? No idea until I convert. Luckily, it’s the easiest conversion to do.

    • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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      Different languages. In German you never say “Juli der 4.” it’s always “der 4. Juli”. (I am sure someone will proof me wrong by digging up some weird old text, but it’s still never used in day to day conversation)
      I assume it’s similar for other languages as well.

  • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    I think the two points missing from most debates are

    1. The imperial system does a damn good job at measuring things the way a human would. A foot is roughly the length of a big foot. A single degree farenheit is just big enough that you could guesstimate it with enough practice. If the temperatures are negative, you dump sand on the roads instead of salt.

    2. It’s like seven units of measurement in a trenchant. You never have to convert gallons to cubic miles. You never have to convert from dots to angstoms, and nobody has ever had to convert the surveyors mile to the nautical mile. It feels schizophrenic because claiming it’s one singular system is like saying Italian, French, and Portuguese languages are all regional dialects of Europeanese.

    My point isn’t “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”, I’m saying for the average non-scientist there may be a logical reason why we like it so much

      • turmacar@lemmy.world
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        No no. The rest of the world is constantly out of sorts on what common measurements are. It’s like how monolingual non-English-speaking people are constantly aware they’re not speaking the natural language of English.

        /s

      • 4lan@lemmy.world
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        Lol is it?

        Think of all the different numbers you have to divide different units in our system by to convert.

        numbers are base 10 for every single society on earth. Metric units always scale by 10. It’s literally perfect for how we interpret numbers

  • thorbot@lemmy.world
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    Another fucking imperial versus metric meme, never seen this before. Most of us use metric already, shut the fuck up

    • Zetta@mander.xyz
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      I switched to metric for all my personal projects right around the time I started doing any sort of project that had a form of measuring. Metric is better full stop

    • 4lan@lemmy.world
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      As an American I approve this comment.

      I’ve been into 3D printing for a few years and it has forced me into metric. Now my brain works in millimeters and it’s way better

      Our countries insistence on using imperial is evidence of our resistance to change. Even the creators of the system have abandoned it

  • Thranduil@lemmy.world
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    Mother tell the children not to check the temps. Tell the children not to read my books what they mean what they say.

    Sorry i read Danzig so I though of the band