Comment on Half as Hot
tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 month agoI agree that the numbers should just speak for themselves
Cutting 70°C in half is by definition -101.5°C
I’d argue here that no one would make this leap nor mental calculation, and most people would just divide X by 2 and gauge what the resulting Y is based on their familiarity with the weather. If it’s 30 / 2 = 15, people would think “Huh, 15 is pretty cool compared to room temperature ~ 20ish , that’s significant”. If it’s 90 / 2 = 45, people would think “Huh, both 90 and 45 are pretty hot, but it seems like a meaningful reduction nonetheless.”
I dunno, maybe I’m overexplaining this
TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 1 month ago
All I can say is that in my professional career where I have to write technical reports and summarize technical information I would never represent it that way, and I would be concerned if a colleague, customer, or supplier did it even if they were communicating it to a non technical audience. I would also call out my employer or management if they ever tried to change the representation of the data to something like this.
That could say more about me than anything else, but that’s where I am at.