Wherein I'm gobsmacked by ignorance

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, I work for a chemical company. Said company makes some reasonably complex chemicals. The QC (quality control, meaning testing) of said chemicals is fairly rigorous. I’m talking viscosity tests, calculations of non-volatile mass, measurements of reaction time. Reaction time to the second (+/- 1), damn you!

We have a QC tech who has been with us for thirty years. THIRTY YEARS!

Only today did I learn the horrible truth.

I was in the QC lab, observing a routine product check. The product’s reaction time came out to measure 15:54, give or take a second. I see the QC tech writing “reaction time - 15.54”

I chuckle.

“No, no, you’ve got it mixed up. The reaction time was fifteen minutes and fifty-four seconds. That’s 15.9 minutes.” The QC tech blinks.

blink

“No, it’s 15.54.”

I frown. “No, it’s not. Fifteen minutes and fifty-four seconds is 15.9 minutes.”

“No, it’s 15.54.”

A look of horror crosses my face. “But…54/60 is 0.9. There are sixty seconds in a minute. This reaction time was 15.9 minutes.”

“No, it was 15 minutes - plus 54 seconds. That’s 15.54 minutes.”

“Oh sweet Jesus, let me see your past logs.”

Yep, my horrors are confirmed. Thirty years of data. Not once has a reaction time ever been recorded to two decimals amounting more than 0.59.

“We have specifications on certain products that are +/- fifteen seconds!”

“Yeah? So what?”

“This product has a spec of 15.7 to 16.2 minutes!”

“…so?”

“Have you ever recorded 15.9 seconds?!”

“…no…the timer has never said 15:90”

“It fucking rolls over between 15:59 and 16:01! Haven’t you ever considered that your bullshit math would never, ever give you 15.9 given that that the timer would never display “15:90”?!”

“…no…”

“And why would that be?!”

“Well, the timer never shows that”

“Of course it doesn’t! There are sixty seconds in a minute! Haven’t you ever wondered how seconds in a minute should be converted to the decimal minute?”

“…it’s not in the manufacturing instructions.”

Good God. Thirty years of tainted data. How on earth does a person remain ignorant for so long?

I mean, really. Most people have no trouble understanding how $0.90 is nine-tenths of a dollar. How does one spend thirty years having no problem saying that 5:54 is 5.54 minutes?

2

Yeah, I’ve had that conversation about a million times. I also tried a long explanation of why 2 ft. 1 in is not, in fact, 2.1 feet. Of course, I’m usually dealing with middle and high schoolers, so better - but still frustrating sometimes.

3

Students, I can (somewhat) understand making this mistake.

This person is a senior QC technician.

AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

(agghhhhhhhh!!!)

4

That is hilariously, tragically, horribly… just --> :eek:

5

I once had to cut a piece of lumber for a customer who wanted a 4’5" length. I said aloud cheerfully “OK, 53 inches it is!”
He absolutely lost it.
“No! 53 inches is way too big! it has to be four foot five, and no bigger!” He shook his head and turned to the line up behind him, pointing at me with his thumb with a “can you believe this broad?” look on his face.:rolleyes: The other customers gave a little “yep, she’s the insane one here pal” smile to humour him.
Once he left everyone else had a joking request for their lumber cuts, so we all had fun with it. “One foot forty seven inches, please!” “Can you cut this eight foot board into a twelve foot one?” “what’s this in cubits?”

6

For the OP, I’m curious: did you fire the guy (or recommend to his boss that he be fired)? It sounds like he still doesn’t understand what he did wrong. Scary.

7

Maybe his stopwatch is metric.

Betcha don’t feel so smart now, bub.

8

I told my supervisor (a chemist)

He just sadly shook his head.

“We take certain knowledge for granted, I guess”

This, this, America! This is why we suck so bad at science and technology these days!

We haven’t educated our people to even WONDER why 54 seconds isn’t 0.54 minutes.

God help us all.

9

I died a little tonight, thanks to this.

I happily hide away from reality, and then you fuck up our pretend world with data, and then you have to fact-check it?Q?!1

What sort of a reality have I stumbled upon that uses metrics in america?

You are the wildcard, sir!

10

Holy. Crap. :smack:

11

Ouch. I hope you (or someone!) are able to explain it to where he gets it. At least the data going forward will be accurate.

A new “opportunity for improvement!” Hire a grunt to convert all the data correctly! You’ll be a hero! :slight_smile:

12

the details are not totally clear in the story but there may be problems with other than this person.

raw data entry should be in the form of the measured quantity.

if the data is measured in minutes and seconds the form should have an entry location for minutes and seconds. either ___ minutes ____ seconds or : (mm:ss)

if the form has a data location for decimal minutes that is the result of a calculation and should not be the only data entry. if the timer reads decimal minutes then this data entry is OK.

if you aren’t recording the actual seconds then that is poor science.

13

God, what company, what chemicals? Are people at risk because of this? Don’t y’all have a legal duty to report this? If they’re not, are you prepared to blow the whistle?

I’m not asking you to out yourself here, but this is way too important let lie…isn’t it?

14

Who the hell can calculate decimal from base 60 in their head? I am pretty good at maths, but that would give me a headache very quickly.

As johnpost says, the form should have an entry of mins:secs and the doodad you make all calculations on should automatically multiply it into decimal. Having to do it by hand in your head means potential mistakes will be out the wazoo. As demonstrated by the anecdote.

15

Thirty years and it’s apparently never been an issue till now?

That’s both a question and the answer to your question. It really has never seemed to be a problem until now.

16

Time to learn Chinese. There may be jobs in communicating the commands of our new overlords to the American public.

17

You guys ISO certified? An auditor should have caught this long ago. As mentioned, the data entry form itself sounds like it has problems.

They call it idiot proofing for a reason.

18

Oh come on… if you do it every day as part of your job, it’s no big deal. I’ve had entry-level jobs where I needed to report my work in hours & percentage of hours, down to 5 minute increments. I figured that out as a 20-year-old.

As a programmer, back when I did a lot of C & C++, I used to be able to convert from binary to hex to decimal pretty quickly. It’s not that hard if you do it all the time.

I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to expect someone working as a senior technician in a lab to be able to do time conversions in their head. As the OP mentioned, he figured it out instantly. Math ain’t THAT hard.

19

I’m sorry, why do you record the time in decimal minutes instead of minutes and seconds? Is it for legal reasons?

Unless there’s a compulsory regulation requiring you to use decimal minutes, you’re using the wrong units.

20

If I can ask a stupid question, why was it ever necessary to convert seconds into decimal in the first place? There’s a perfectly good system for capturing fractions of a minute - it’s called “seconds”. There’s no advantage in terms of accuracy in converting it to decimals. Call it :45 or .75, three-quarters of a minute is three-quarters of a minute. All that can possibly happen is someone miscalculates. Or, in this case, fails to convert. I admit that’s pretty egregious, but I can’t help feel it’s a least partly a result of including a completely unnecessary step.