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 — the hobby here being reverse-engineering original units from oddly specific measurements in another unit. Unlike many of the My Hobby comics, where Cueball's hobby is something eccentric, prankish or dangerous, in this situation he uses his hobby simply to understand the origin of someone else's unusual phrasing.

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 formulae 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. In this case, a fathom is a unit of measurement used to measure how deep water is. One fathom is equal to six feet, or 1.8288 metres. The depth of the bay has been measured as being greater than 100 fathoms, and someone has converted that to 182.8 meters.

In most cases, 182.88 would round to 182.9. As the title text explains, in this case 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. It suggests that they were worried that the maximum depth may be between 182.88 meters and 182.9 meters — a margin of just 2 centimeters, which is beyond the precision with which anyone is likely to be measuring such things. Moreover, in most areas of seawater it would be within the daily variance due to tidal activity, and the seabed is typically a dynamic environment in which the depth profile could be changing by this much over very short periods anyway. 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.

False precision may also sometimes be used in product labelling to present things as "more than a" precise number, to make the product sound more enticing, cheap or worthwhile (for example, saying "now with more than 28.4% more water", when the product only has 28.5% more water).

Transcript

[Hairbun stands at a podium to the left, gesturing toward a sign, with an oval (likely representing the bay) and some illegible text on it. Four visitors stand nearby observing: Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and White Hat (in that order). 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)

Or it has a variable number of programs, with some only running at certain times, but never less than a core 18 programs. 82.13.184.33 08:28, 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)

gee, thanks! /srs so it was a problem with the category formatting i made... i'll try to avoid in future! --Utdtutyabthsc (talk) 10:55, 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)

A better solution there would seem to be to find an everyday object of about the capacity of the amount to be taken (a coffee mug?), and use that as a comparison. A volume in mL is likely to be just as meaningless as the 31.33 tablespoons. 82.13.184.33 08:39, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes exactly, and some authors actually do this (using coffee mugs, for example), but others just seem to stupidly follow some guidebook for easy language ("convert mL to teaspoons or tablespoons") out of fear that "someone", either a superior or a client, might complain if they deviate from it, even when they KNOW they are writing bullshit. This is the stuff that ultimately brings down civilizations IMHO. --93.241.210.5 10:51, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

But ml (or mL) is certainly better than tablespoons, as tablespoons are much weirder units (real tablespoons vary in size, shape etc.). 2001:4C4E:1C16:4500:78C5:2A84:7075:E1DB 11:24, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not convinced about 'certainly better'. If it's still meaningless for practical purposes, well meaningless is meaningless - there aren't really degrees of meaninglessness. It doesn't really matter if it's more precisely defined. It's a bit like asking me if I want some set of technical instructions in Mandarin or Sumerian. The Sumerian is likely to require more approximation of words, but that doesn't mean the Mandarin is going to be any more useful to me. 82.13.184.33 14:24, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I am a translator and I encounter this as well, although not exactly often. I remember a recent book about dinosaurs that listed sizes and weights in both metric and imperial units, and it was very apparent where an overly precise conversion was use. 185.180.14.152 (talk) 09:25, 21 May 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

In that case, though, it probably is appropriate, (at least to the mm, if not to the 0.1mm) in that the sizes have been specifically defined within the laws of the game, and then translated to metric for use in the modern world, without wanting to change the actual sizes of the tables. A professional player might well notice if the size of the table was 4mm out. 82.13.184.33 08:39, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

This sort of stuff would be unfathomable if we didn't have Randall. --134.157.254.7 08:22, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

It always makes me smile when I get my milk delivered by the quaint old traditional milk man in '568mL' glass bottles. Should we have some notable real-world examples on the page? JeffUK (talk) 08:46, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't know. There are a lot of times where packets have wierd measurements on them - I've found packets with '168g' on them. GSLikesCats307 (talk) 10:01, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Those were probably previously 180g, but they've sneakily reduced the quantity while charging the same price. 82.13.184.33 09:24, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

This is more of a pet peeve than a hobby. Ugh! Alcatraz ii (talk) 08:51, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps inspired the recent Artemis 2 mission in which it was announced the craft would make an "approximately 9.8 feet/sec" burn (3m/s)? 82.37.105.250 (talk) 09:27, 21 May 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There was this really funny exchange during one of the press conferences. Some reporter from Reuters went on and on about whether or not the mission was really going to be the farthest anyone was from the Earth, and cited Apollo 13's stated records v. the Artemis II mission. And after some time, one of the NASA people on the panel calmly replied, "The figures you stated were in nautical miles." They then moved on to the next question in awkward silence. Fephisto (talk) 13:30, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I love this because one of my “original units” epiphanies was realizing that 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit normal body temperature is a conversion from the accepted 37 degrees Celsius, a convenient whole number. LouK (talk) 14:15, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Normal body temperature is acutally a range, generally from 97 F to 99 F (if measured with an oral thermometer- will be different if using a body surface or rectal thermometer) BorQhue del Sol (talk) 14:54, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Another possibility is that someone had 200m of rope, but needed 17.2m and cut those off, so they could only determine that the remaining length of rope was not enough to reach the seabed and in conclusion the bay must be deeper than 182.8m, coincidentally close to 100 fathoms. The proper way to deal with a unit conversion however isn't to quibble about significant digits but to get a proper measurement, because if the only number you have is fathoms, chances are there's a more recent measurement recorded with a more recent unit. You would probably end up with "deeper than 200m", but again, don't randomly choose the significant digit. 94.31.94.181 (talk) 14:32, 21 May 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
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