Gregory's Server@mhoye That is interesting.
I find the 5<->8 conversion to be enough to work out useful conversions in my head. It works very well for all the speed limit conversions.
|
15 comments
 @cpontvieux @LovesTha @mhoye @xek Kmph, while not official/scientific notation (as in notation encouraged by the SI) is apparently a widely used abbreviation. For example, see the link below. It's potentially interesting (context dependent) to make people aware of SI conventions. Possibly not so useful to scold people on social media for employing widely used everyday alternatives in an "everyday" context? https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/kph @level98 @cpontvieux @mhoye @xek kph would irk me, thousands of what per hour? As does KMPH, case does matter. (using a capital K at the start of a sentence is an awkward argument about which norm is more important) @LovesTha @cpontvieux @mhoye @xek "k" for "kilo" as in "thousands" is lower-case. The "official" notation, as mentioned by Cyrille, is: km/h or km hā»Ā¹ If you (or anyone passing) happens to be interested / are not already aware... the organisation who determines such "official" things is the BIPM. A description/documentation of the SI system of units (overseen by the BIPM) can be found on their website. km/h is not an SI unit... just "accepted" for use with the SI. @LovesTha @cpontvieux @mhoye @xek Pascals is Pa, but that;s close enough for comic effect! š "Kelvin Mega" could be a death metal band?   @mhoye @LovesTha In some American-authored stuff, maybe some UK works as well, places wind up being 40 or 16 or (my favorite) "about 24" kilometers away surprisingly often. It amuses me to no end. What human would say "about 24" km instead of "about 25 km away? (Aside from Babylonians and other base-60 cultures.)  @LovesTha @mhoye the hex based conversion covers what I needā¦ 30 mph is about 0x30 km. The other direction is not as trivial but gives a good approximation if you can recall all seven bit numbers in both bases ā 64 km āisā 0x40, so 60ish kms are 40 miles. It gets funky with things like 55 miles as 55 m is not 85 km but 5 needs to be converted separatelyā¦ |
@LovesTha @mhoye 5<->8 also provides the same-ish error term. In English, it helps that kilometers get measured in multiples of 8 for some unknowable reason.
(Oh! You could do both, average them, and come out basically dead on! Just need to remember enough Fibonacci numbers to cover the face of a circular slide rule firstā¦)