Talk:3065: Square Units

I like this one :) reminds me of trying to use recipes in imperial units with metric equipment 162.158.108.29 19:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I so want to stand outside Randall's office holding up {{citation needed}} for not giving an actual citation on the title text. 162.158.175.159 20:07, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

We should start using ares as a common unit of measure. https://www.britannica.com/science/are 172.69.135.15 20:09, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

We have done, some still do: Hectare#Are 172.70.163.70 21:20, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I really hate when people use "metric ton" instead of the correct megagram (Mg). SDSpivey (talk) 12:28, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

The area of eaten vegetation is all well and good, but we really need to know the total volume consumed. In barn-megaparsecs, ideally. 172.71.241.89 21:26, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I just got the mail notification for this and the previous comic at the same time. I would say that Randall forgot to send out the previous one before, but surely this is automated, so I guess something went wrong with that setup. Fabian42 (talk) 00:01, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Percentages? Could we not? Can't we use multiplication factors instead? 172.70.230.38 21:30, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I really want to know what the 80-fold error was now Thief (talk) 10:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Here's an error in chemical names instead--Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) occasionally appears as diphenhydrazine, which (if it existed) might be a rocket fuel. Google for it, just for scientific fun. Rocket flight to Australia, now in your local pharmacy! 172.69.71.207 11:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

There's a dangerous point of confusion between diphenhydramine and dimenhydrinate (Gravol). In medical contexts, the two are often given differing capitalizations to emphasize the differences between the words, to reduce the risk of patients being given the wrong one (e.g. dimenhyDRINATE vs. diphenhydrAMINE). BunsenH (talk) 14:51, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Realistically, if "diphenhydrazine" is diphenylhydrazine, it would be a much poorer rocket fuel than hydrazine. It's a known substance, used in chemical manufacture, melting point a bit above the boiling point of water, moderately nasty in terms of health risks. Flammable, yes, but not particularly exciting. BunsenH (talk) 15:05, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

A particularly vexing origami issue.172.71.178.156 14:42, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

80-fold error is nothing. I regularly see news articles wrong by factor of 1000, as a result from incorrect translation between languages using long and short scales.

The land area of Australia really depends on when it last rained. There are very large areas that will be completely dry prior to rain that will be flooded after. SDSpivey (talk) 12:28, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I used the area from the CIA world factbook that included both land and water area. TomtheBuilder (talk) 18:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

You should never write `square cm`, etc. but always `cm²`. Same for seemingly standard abbreviations: Don't write `ccm` for "cubic centimeter", but `cm³`. Even though, in spoken language "square centimeter" is correct. Another confusion can sometimes arise from not knowing that squaring or cubing binds less than the centi-/kilo-/... prefix. I.e., `cm³` is `(0.01m)³` not `0.01(m³)`. A liter (`l`) is `0.001m³` or `1dm³ = (0.1m)³`. A milliliter is `0.001l = 0.000001m³ = (0.01m)³ = 1cm³` --172.69.109.92 12:48, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

All you need to remember is:

"X units square" = a square of X units = (X units)² = X² (units²)

"X square units" = X times a square unit = X (units²) = (√X units)²

"X prefixunits" is (X × prefix) units, for the sake of preserving the units so "7 decagrammes" is "70 grammes" (or 0.07 kg, if you need that, for whatever reason) [though not to be confused with "grammage", which is "grammes per square metre"!] and "450 nanometres" is "450×10^-9 metres" or "4.5×10^-7 metres" 172.69.195.62 14:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Getting a bit off-topic, but is "grammage" really a unit or rather a quantity? I.e., "Grammage measured in gram(mes) per square meter", same as "mass in kilogram". Or would you say "Standard office paper has 80 grammage(s)?" (Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker, so honest question). --172.69.109.89 15:33, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

More on-topic: I would never say "X units square" ("5 meter(s) square"), mostly because it sounds weird and unclear. But YKMV (your kilometrage may vary) --172.69.109.87 15:43, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see that the table is too wide to display (on a "normal" full-hd screen). But I agree that more than ~3 significant digits are kind of useless. We could even add a column with the unit "area of Australia" --172.71.160.61 16:19, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Another point: The percentage "gain" column is mostly wrong, e.g. from 1 to 144 you have a "gain" of 143 or 14300% not 14400% (I'd rather show a gain factor though). --172.71.160.60 16:18, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

There are other mistakes being made in communicating the factoid. One is called out by the comic itself (namely the defoliation of Australia in particular rather than a nondescript Australia-sized area of land), but there are others too. For example, it has become more ambiguous whether the factoid is about a single insect or the insect as a species. It'd be somewhat believable if you're talking about an entire species eating that much per day. The other miscommunication is that it's gone from talking about grass to foliage in general, but foliage in general can vary in density a lot more than a patch of grass, creating additional inaccuracies. 172.70.47.53 17:57, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

"The title text tells us that Randall once found an 80-fold error in a reported distance in a published source. However, it is left as an exercise for the reader to figure out which one." Isn't that what explainxkcd is for? 162.158.154.5 15:41, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes! That is the ENTIRE reason I came to this page! 172.68.164.68 06:36, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

I was playing, originally with the following, but gave it up when the current table was inserted. Given the complaints about explaining the colours, etc, and a few problems with the one we see (no way of differentiating when it becomes a "square of side BLAH" instead of "BLAH square units", etc), I thought maybe someone might want to give it a revamp. - Note that I took inspiration from the "Template:Diagonal split header" that exists on actual Wikipedia, but flipped it (unfortunately, flipped it so that one defines Bottom Right colour then Top Left colour, but still gives Top Left text before Bottom Right text, which was the next thing on my list of editing to do). And in the Key I had intended to also demonstrate a value taken from the Bottom Right (X units²) of one row being misused as a Top Left (X x X unit square) 'feed'. One could still apply the colours for how much of an increase (or, occasionally, mild-decrease) of each step (here, based upon the definitive value of that step, vis-a-vis the prior one(s), not the conversion, which is mostly a fairly accurate and consistant-to-the-statement conversion) there was, but the general trend of a rise in cumulative factor can basically be read easily enough. Oh, and check the figures, maybe. I hand-copied them, for reasons best known to my past self, rather than autogenerated the entire table lines from the same thing that I used to organise the figures I had calculated. Other, non-numeric errors in transcribing/non-consistent formattings may also have slipped in.

I more or less left it at the stage where I was considering adding and removing a few of the enforced line-breaks to make the rows of equal height (thus consistent with the diagonals), and also refine the positions of the align-left/align-right texts a bit better. But I'm not sure I'd want it, as it is now, actually replacing the current version. Maybe could act just as inspiration for the corrections necessary to the one we have noe, instead.... 172.70.58.46 00:19, 25 March 2025 (UTC)