Excessive precision at the rugby union World Cup
FEEDBACK doesn鈥檛 pretend to understand how the calculates for the rugby union competition. We鈥檙e just about aware that the ball is roughly ellipsoid and that in the past the players tended to be posher than in the other kind of rugby (league).
However, we鈥檙e deeply intrigued by this update from the World Cup website forwarded by Tim Hely: 鈥淎rgentina and Samoa both had a rating of 78.71 but when expanded to 15 decimal places the difference between the two was minimal (78.709236088306938 to 78.708853582562098).鈥� This, apparently, enabled the Samoans to become not only 鈥渢he first Pacific Islanders to occupy a top-eight spot in the rankings鈥�, but even to be one place ahead of Argentina ().
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Reaching for a calculator and subtracting Argentina鈥檚 score from Samoa鈥檚, we find that the latter became proud holder of seventh place in the world by a margin of 0.00038250574484 points. So the ranking was decided by a difference of a mere 4 ten-thousandths of a point, or four decimal places.
Are the 15-decimal-place results significant, or a mere spreadsheet artefact? In our naive view, ignoring the mysterious ways in which the scores are weighted, this level of precision would imply the existence of femtotries, in which the ball goes across the line by 0.000000000000001 metres 鈥� not much more than the diameter of a proton.
鈥淚s this gobbledegook?鈥� Tony Holkham asks, after reading that support services 鈥渆xcels in the art of customer-focused behaviours as well as the science of risk management
Extinction of humans not worth mentioning
鈥淩ESEARCH disconnected from reality鈥� was the subject line of the email Rodney Blackall sent us after reading the 鈥淣ature notes鈥� column on the back page of the UK鈥檚 Daily Telegraph on 4 December 2012.
The piece described research done by the Institute of Ecology in the Netherlands which reported that in the extreme case of climate change leading to a temperature rise of 6 掳C, 鈥済reat tits would be in danger of being wiped out鈥� because their breeding cycle would get out of sync with the insect population.
鈥淚t may have got lost in translation or editing,鈥� Rodney comments, 鈥渂ut the possible extinction of humans and much else in this scenario seems to be overlooked.鈥�
TRYING to start work after an overnight software upgrade, Feedback found Adobe鈥檚 InCopy software inexplicably trying to retrieve a draft of a two-month-old document. It failed, and offered us a button to click to cancel the operation.
So we did, and the program naturally produced a message informing us that it was cancelling the retrieval 鈥� and offered us a button to click to cancel the cancellation. So we clicked that, out of idle curiosity鈥� and the program crashed, which may be as well for the integrity of the space-time continuum.
AIRSOFT MEGASTORE is advertising that its prices are 鈥�125 per cent lower than any other airsoft retailer鈥�, with a money-back guarantee. We are as puzzled as reader George Malone over what this may mean.
Our hopes of gaining endless free money, by not buying products related to a sport resembling paintball, were squashed by the even more confusing that the company 鈥渨ill MATCH the lower price, then discount an ADDITIONAL 25 per cent of the difference鈥�.
TELEPHONE company Vodafone recently ran an expensive series of UK adverts saying: 鈥淎fter being voted the best, there鈥檚 only one way to go.鈥�
Feedback cannot help treating this as a problem in measurement theory and suggests the answer must be 鈥渄own鈥�. The company鈥檚 answer was 鈥渂etter鈥�, which is illogical and doesn鈥檛 answer the question.
Still, when you鈥檝e painted yourself into a logical corner, there鈥檚 only one way you can go. Um, hold on鈥�
IN THE beauty section of Velvet, a magazine sold in Cambridge, UK, Richard Parkins came across an advert by a firm called Dermaplicity. It promised readers: 鈥淩eplenish, awaken, and regenerate your skin this winter with the help of impressive 3D Stem Cell products.鈥�
鈥淓vidently, ordinary 2D stem cells won鈥檛 do,鈥� Richard observes. 鈥淏ut will you need the special glasses?鈥�
Phone that falls through the floor
FINALLY, hand-held computing technology gets more and more wonderful 鈥� it鈥檚 amazing how much they can pack into small spaces. John Hood sends a review of the 鈥淪ony Xperia T鈥� from Computer Shopper magazine鈥檚 January 2013 edition, with a fact-panel giving the dimensions of the device as 鈥�129 x 67 x 9mm, 139kg鈥�.
From these figures he calculates its density as 1,786,931 kilograms per cubic metre 鈥� compare water at 1000 kg/m3 and osmium, with the greatest measured density of any element, at about 22,570 kg/m3. Is this phone a pocket-sized neutron star?
Computer Shopper rather spoils our fun by giving the mass in the article text as 139g. Hmph. Feedback suspects that, just as we often skip verse in Victorian novels, an arts-educated proofreader skipped the fact-panel.