# Unexpected precision **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 11, 2021, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720 "2021-03-11T17:07:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/1 "2021-03-11T17:07:38Z")
I placed an Instacart order which included a request for 2 pounds of ground beef. The web site tells me that what I’m actually getting is 2.0299999999999994 pounds. I counted the 13 nines. I fully understand how floating point numbers work in a computer, but somebody needs to add a little code to do some rounding there. I don’t need to see the exact number of atoms I’m getting. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/2 "2021-03-11T17:10:17Z")
Are you going to complain if you only get 2.0299999999999993 pounds? ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/3 "2021-03-11T17:11:58Z")
From Douglas Hofstadter’s “Metamagical Themas”: > I myself once learned 380 digits of π, when I was a crazy high-school kid. My never-attained ambition was to reach the spot, 762 digits out in the decimal expansion, where it goes “999999”, so that I could recite it out loud, come to those six 9’s, and then impishly say, “and so on!” ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/4 "2021-03-11T17:13:13Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Are you going to complain if you only get 2.0299999999999993 pounds? - Some recipes require precise amounts. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/5 "2021-03-11T17:17:52Z")
I always get a kick out of news stories that convert from metric for the benefit of USians. Like “the explosion hurled debris up to 20 meters away (65.6168 feet)”. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/6 "2021-03-11T17:20:54Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Are you going to complain if you only get 2.0299999999999993 pounds? Unfortunately, my femtogram scale is not working right now. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/7 "2021-03-11T17:21:50Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > > > Are you going to complain if you only get 2.0299999999999993 pounds? > > Unfortunately, my femtogram scale is not working right now. - Did you lose the calibration weights _again?_ ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/8 "2021-03-11T17:43:44Z")
Could be worse. We bought a trinket at a Christmas decoration store and it rang up as $76,410,081,785,00. Fortunately I made a counter offer that they accepted. But I still have the photo. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/9 "2021-03-11T17:53:07Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Are you going to complain if you only get 2.0299999999999993 pounds? On another board someone from the UK said he liked to mess with the clerks by ordering a third of a kilo. I said that might backfire on him. Clerk: 300 grams, 329, 332, so far so good… 334 – shoot. [takes some off] 332.6… 332.8… Jokester: That’s close enough, actually. Clerk: Shut up! You wanted a third and that’s what you’re gonna get. 333; yay! Point 2… point 4 – dammit! ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/10 "2021-03-11T17:58:43Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > Could be worse. We bought a trinket at a Christmas decoration store and it rang up as $76,410,081,785,00. Fortunately I made a counter offer that they accepted. > > But I still have the photo. I very nearly made this mistake two years ago. I was registering for a course at a Texas university and instead of putting “1” in the number of courses I was registering to pay for, I almost put “2250” (the number of dollars that course was going to cost in tuition.) Had I done so and hit “submit,” it would have cost me $2,250 x 2,250 = over five million dollars. ---
**Author:** ![MoonMoon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonmoon/32/2959_2.png) [@MoonMoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoonMoon)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/11 "2021-03-11T18:02:23Z")
That level of precision is better than me always forgetting that one store counts a “1” as a single banana, and another store counts “1” as a bunch of bananas (neither website specifies). Can’t tell you the number of times I’ve received one lonely banana in my order. Luckily I had an on the ball Shipt shopper once, who texted me to be sure I wanted SIX BUNCHES OF BANANAS. No. No, I did not. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/12 "2021-03-11T18:12:12Z")
Yeah that one sometimes trips me up too. I once intended to order 3 pounds of potatoes, and received 3 ten-pound bags of potatoes. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/13 "2021-03-11T18:13:36Z")
> [@MoonMoon](#): > > another store counts “1” as a bunch of bananas Is there a specific number of bananas in a “bunch”? ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/14 "2021-03-11T18:35:51Z")
Heh. There was a local news story a while back about exactly that. > **[‘Oh no, what have I done?:’ Woman ends up with bunch of bananas in online...](https://www.ckom.com/2020/12/09/oh-no-what-have-i-done-saskatoon-woman-ends-up-with-bunch-of-bananas-in-online-shopping-mix-up/)** > > Former Saskatoon resident Jade Jamison and her husband have strictly shopped online since the COVID-19 pandemi... I have this image of their 2-year old kid who was “elated” jumping up and down in excitement over the unexpected bounty of bananas and it just makes me smile. ---
**Author:** ![blabbermeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9a140/32.png) [@blabbermeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blabbermeister)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/15 "2021-03-11T18:43:09Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > From Douglas Hofstadter’s “Metamagical Themas”: > > > I myself once learned 380 digits of π, when I was a crazy high-school kid. My never-attained ambition was to reach the spot, 762 digits out in the decimal expansion, where it goes “999999”, so that I could recite it out loud, come to those six 9’s, and then impishly say, “and so on!” When someone gets there, they should pause before each “9”, pretending to recall some complicated mnemonic, maybe a minute or two, only to say “9” again and repeat 4 more times. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/16 "2021-03-11T18:49:29Z")
My kid recently meant to order 5 cloves of garlic. They were surprised when they received 5 POUNDS of garlic. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/17 "2021-03-11T19:00:48Z")
I recall a story from maybe 20 years ago when a guy was buying a stick of RAM for his PC. The inexperienced clerk observed the price tag in the display case for a single stick of RAM - and then mistakenly sold him the entire carton of RAM sticks (perhaps a couple dozen) for that price. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/18 "2021-03-11T19:05:13Z")
In other local news, a Mr. Vin Culum appears to have lost his job at the local grocery store. Details at 11 (.1111111111) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/19 "2021-03-11T19:53:54Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > “the explosion hurled debris up to 20 meters away The episode that turned me off Mythbusters - they myth was that putting water on a greasfire would shoot flames “twenty feet” into the air. The experiment has flames shoot 18 feet. Myth “busted”. Yeah, right. Did they actually think the myth was 20.000000000 feet? ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720/20 "2021-03-12T19:33:33Z")
There’s a story of a farmer telling a visitor that the mountains bordering his property were “60 million and 11 years old”, explaining that eleven years earlier, a geologist told him they were 60 million years old. On an undergraduate engineering exam, I solved a problem and wrote the answer as “~ 31.26 degrees”. The professor showed a sense of humor when he marked it correct but added, “_How_ approximately?” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-precision/937720.md?page=2)