LSLGuy, you say, “My assumption all along has been that you would present a recipe with ingredient list completely in US customary units, and then the same recipe restated into entirely metric units.” That would be a lunatic waste of a lot of space, which is probably why I have never seen a cookbook like that. Have you? What made you think such a strange thing for so many replies to me, especially since I specifically gainsaid any such assumption several times?
You say “an output number of a conversion calculation can’t be more precise than the input number was.” Here again you’ve proved something no one ever disagreed with. Why did you bother to point out such an obvious fact?
“1 cup carrots” does TOO mean “1.0000000 cups carrots.” That’s math, and you know it, so can you tell me why you say the opposite?
You say I’m “guilty of using correct arithmetic to produce an incorrect (or at least invalid) real-world result.” First of all – as you seem to have forgotten so I’ll say it a FIFTH time – nowhere in the recipes do I do that. Nowhere in the recipes do I convert anything from US units to metric or vice versa. Why can’t you seem to understand this simple fact?
But no, correct arithmetic can never “produce an incorrect real-world result.” That’s by definition of the term “correct arithmetic.” The result might display useless precision, but it’s still the best possible number with that much precision, which is the opposite of “incorrect.” Why would you say otherwise?
Similarly, the result of a number derived from correct arithmetic, even if carried to uselessly extreme precision, is the opposite of “invalid.” Indeed, the result is the very definition of valid in that no other number with that many decimal places is better. Why would you say the opposite? (I remind you it was you who postulated this extreme degree of precision, not me.)
Adding the adjective “real-world” to the noun “result” doesn’t change anything you said about using correct arithmetic. It’s still wrong with respect to the word “incorrect” and the word “invalid.”
If all you’re saying, LSLGuy, is that the amounts of ingredients in recipes may be adjusted up or down, any dolt, including me, knows that. Sheesh.
I was and still am looking for criticism of the paragraphs explaining how I arrived at the figure of exactly 3,785.411784 mL per gallon, which informs many of the cells of the spreadsheet. Here they are.
"In Case You Care
"Here’s how you can arrive at the magic number of exactly 3,785.411784 milliliters per gallon, which is a number that lets us move from traditional U.S. units to metric and back.
"(The letters mL mean milliliters, i.e., one thousandth of a liter. The letters cm mean centimeters, i.e., a hundredth of a meter. All the numbers below are exact to the very last last decimal place except the very last number, which is precise to only 15 decimal places.)
"1 US liquid gallon = 231 cubic inches (given, per NIST)
"1 inch = 2.54 cm (given, per NIST).
"Therefore 1 cubic inch = 16.387064 cubic cm (from 2.54 cm/inch of height * 2.54 cm/inch of width * 2.54 cm/inch of depth). If there are 231 cubic inches per gallon and each cubic inch is 16.387064 cubic cm, then the product of those two numbers is the answer we’re seeking, which is the number of cubic cm in 1 gallon of water, which because 1 cubic cm is equal to 1 mL means the magic number is 3,785.411784 mL in one gallon. The formula for your calculator or spreadsheet is 231 * (2.54^3).
"All the other traditional U.S. units such as tablespoons and pints can be calculated based on the gallon, which is what this spreadsheet does, so now that we know how many mL are in a gallon we know all the other units as well.
“(The reciprocal, if you need to convert from mL to gallons, which is 3,785.411784 raised to the power of -1, is pretty close to 0.000264172052359 if I typed it right, in case you care.)”
O Straightdopulists, how can I improve the seven paragraphs above, first as to facts and second as to clarity?