3248: 182.8 Meters

182.8 Meters

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Title text: They rounded down to 182.8 instead of rounding up to 182.9 because 182.9 might make the statement incorrect.

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Explanation

This is one of 45 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently by a 1.8288 meter high individual. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This is a comic in the My Hobby series, this time the hobby of reverse-engineering original units from oddly specific measurements in another unit. Unlike in many of the My Hobby cartoons, where Cueball's hobby is something eccentric or prankish, in this situation he uses his hobby simply to understand the origin of someone else's unusual phrasing. A fathom is a unit of measurement used to measure how deep water is. One fathom is equal to six feet.

When presenting measurements where perfect accuracy is not required, such as in casual conversation or when giving simple presentations to the public, speakers will often use approximations, such as rounding to the nearest whole number, or the nearest ten, or using only the most significant digit. When translating these approximations into other measurement systems, however, people will often treat them as precise, and use the standard conversion formulas to get an exact value. This leads to examples of false precision, where the presentation of a measurement implies more information than is actually contained in it.

100 fathoms is actually 182.88 meters, however as the title text explains, they rounded down in order to prevent a possibly incorrect statement. This is a comical attempt at mitigating the false precision; it retains the overly-precise 2.8 meters that the initial statement was too approximate to imply. A more reasonable attempt to translate 'the bay is more than 100 fathoms deep' might be 'the bay is more than 180 meters deep;' this stays close to the initial measurement while rounding to the nearest ten, to convey that the measure is approximate.

Transcript

This is one of 42 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Hairbun stands at a podium to the left, gesturing toward a sign. Four visitors stand nearby observing: Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and White Hat. Cueball has a thought bubble.]

Hairbun: In some places, the bay is more than 182.8 meters deep.

Cueball: (thinking) "More than"? Why would they use that for such a precise...

Cueball: (thinking) ...Aha! 100 fathoms!

[Caption below the panel:]

My Hobby: Reverse-engineering original units

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Discussion

I remember seeing a sign for a university saying it offered “more than 17 programs.” I can’t think of a reason for them to phrase it like that if they had anything other than 18 programs in total. KelOfTheStars! (talk) 04:16, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps the sign was made while a potential 19th program was under consideration or when one of 19 programs was being considered for elimination. Another possibility is that it had small "programs" that were less than full-fledged programs and there was an internal dispute about whether those "programs" should count. My hobby: Thinking about possible excuses petty bureaucrats can use when drafting signs. 150.221.155.241 04:54, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Fun fact! There's never been a US President measuring either 186 or 187 cm tall: https://potus.com/presidential-facts/presidential-heights/ 86.23.176.63 04:34, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

why is it that when i look at the page this shows up: This is a comic in the "My Hobby" is a series of xkcd comics in which Randall suggests (hopefully fictional) hobbies he has. The hobbies tend to be clever or smart-aleck things to do. They do not always fall under the type of activity that would generally be described as a "hobby", but often are merely things Randall (or Cueball) does when certain situations arise. "My Hobby" comics are not presented regularly, but there have been a number such strip.... (yada yada yada) but when i actually edit it it shows an really short sentence??? --Utdtutyabthsc (talk) 04:54, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

It's fixed now.[1] 150.221.155.241 05:07, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I remember having a book about tabletop games and different sports, which was originally written in the USA. During translation all units got converted to metric, so the book had gems like "the billiards table needs to be 213.36 cm long and 108.68 cm wide". Eventually we reverse engineered it exactly like in the comic. --2A02:6BF:8009:1404:A0BE:9C5C:1FBA:A96F 07:35, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I come across this apallingly often in my daily work. I work with patient information sheets for clinical studies. They are supposed to be worded "patient-friendly", so the people who write them convert those nasty mL into much nicer teaspoons and tablespoons. And then you get gems like "During the entire study, a total volume of approximately 31.33 tablespoons of blood will be taken from you." Which is EXTREMELY reader-friendly and easy to grasp, apparently. Recently, I even had a comment trail by previous editors attached to this, where one editor asked "shouldn't we round this to something more usable"? and the other one answered "Nah, you'll only get problems with rounding errors from inconsistently rounding up or down throughout the document, and then someone will complain. Just leave it like it is" --93.241.210.5 07:55, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
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