this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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xkcd #3248: 182.8 Meters

Title text:

They rounded down to 182.8 instead of rounding up to 182.9 because 182.9 might make the statement incorrect.

Transcript:

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Source: https://xkcd.com/3248/

explainxkcd for #3248

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[–] polotype@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 hours ago

That's the whole point. 100 phatoms is really imprecise. But on translation, they didn't bother keeping the significant digit count equal, and since 182.8 m= 100 f , they just left it like that. I mean, it's the only reason he could guess there was a unit change...