The biggest I’ve seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
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There really is an xkcd for everything.
People who still use body parts for measurement…
By a square inch, they much mean a column of infinite height extending upwards. Saying they consume the grassy surface of Australia is a dramatic underestimate.
Honestly a special name for area units wouldn’t be awful
Same goes for volume. People use cubic meters, but I would prefer to use liters instead.
Hectare
The ones in my garden only eat round inches.
Always bothers me that I can’t trust 90% of people (myself included) to properly state area, square feet or feet squared, very different scales.
Square feet are feet squared.
3 square feet are 3 1x1 feet, 1/3rd of a square yard. 3 feet squared is a square yard, 3x larger than 3 sqft.
Unless I’m missing your sarcasm.
Also the purpose of this xkcd
Edit to add, a 600 square foot studio apartment (about 3% of an acre) is much smaller than the 600 foot squared lot that a mcmansion will sit on. (About 9 acres)
I believe “feet squared” and “feet, squared” is the discrepancy here.
The unit ft^2 is pronounced “feet squared” and is equivalent to sq. ft.
No need to add the comma if you say it properly, feet squared are not squared feet, quantifier (3) adjective (square) noun (feet) vs quantifier (3) noun (square) affective (feet), it’s the order of operations in the English language, one is quantifying the distance of the edge, while the other is quantifying how many individual edges (squares) of set distance (feet) you have.
I am not writing it with any discrepancy, though I do get tripped up when talking about it, but generally nobody calls anyone on it, except that’s when expensive projects go boom sometimes.
Read out loud 3sqft and 3’^2,
First one: 3 square feet
Second one: 3 feet (foot? If you’re pedantic) squared (square if you’re a pedant)
Read out loud “three squared” and 3^2
Did you not notice the unit modifier in the my second phrase???
Let me spell it out for you.
3 (three) ’ (feet) ^2 (squared)
You’d have me repeating myself like a monkey, which is, NINE.
3 (three) sq (square) ft (feet) is THREE.
but I suspect you’ll disagree at at this point I’ll move on, my only sadness is there was a person out there who agreed with your original argument that they were the same.
Tell me what “three plus four squared” is.
…
Person behind this account, at this point you’re being deliberately dense.
Find something better to do with your time
Those are the exact same thing because they are the exact same thing.
I understand English is difficult to parse, I hope you’ll get there some day.
I guess you’re the person who this comic is written with thoughts of
Maybe when you’re buying real estate or property some day it’ll click for you, in the mean time please ask for help before writing units in scientific papers, or interpreting those papers, and definitely don’t try to spread the results of those papers to others, lest we end up with world consuming insects.
Highly ironic that you’re telling me to find something better to do with my time.
Get a grip, bud.
