Comments on: Innumeracy Part N

By: Innumeracy Revisited

Innumeracy Revisited — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 23:12:07 +0000

[...] numerical gaffe is a prime example of innumeracy, a favorite topic of mine, and it is doubly bad. First, the New York Times with its old-school print-format [...]

By: David Cary

David Cary — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:59:53 +0000

David Jones, I agree — off by six orders of magnitude.

I wonder if this is not really innumeracy, but a mere typo — or at least the perception of a typo?
Perhaps some editor saw “4.5 million million tons” and overcorrected the reduplicated word to “4.5 million tons”?

p.s.: The last time I checked,

4,500 Gt = 4.5 Tt = 0.0045 Pt.

By: David Jones

David Jones — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:21:35 +0000

And again. 4,500 Gt = 4.5 petatonnes = 4.5 _million_ megatonnes. Discover magazine weren’t out by 3 orders of magnitude, but by _six_! That’s double K-confusion.

By: Mark Nelson

Mark Nelson — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:43:47 +0000

@Justin:
I do usually preface my innumeracy posts with some humility, because I know that without the benefit of a real proofreader I’ll make some similar mistakes. Thanks for catching this one!

By: Justin

Justin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:45:11 +0000

You appear to make a similar error…
6200 megatons + 5800 megatons != 12 million tons (assuming mega means million) It is 12000 million tons.