A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
1–10 of 208 posts
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#2Clever! And a good reason to learn the fibonacci sequence
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#3Nice. Makes it much easier to do the conversion in your head.
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#4In related news - pounds to kilos is "divide by 2, less 10%". Very precise too.
160lbs = 80 - 8 = 72kg
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#5I generally just multiply miles * 1.5 for a rough approximation.
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#6Triple the initial number, add a zero at the end, now halve the resulting number is good enough for my purpose.
Brain is surprisingly good at doubling, tripling and halving operations.
And visually added zero is quite easy too.
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#7I usually just do plus half plus a tenth.
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#8The pendulum has now swung the other way on the misconception by the general public of mathematicians being great at mental arithmetic, and it's become a meme for some mathematicians to take some pride in being average or poor at mental arithmetic. In my experience, most mathematicians (or anyone working in a quantitative field) don't have issues quickly approximating 1.6 * X.
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#9I generally just multiply miles * 1.5 for a rough approximation.
Adding 10% of the original number to that is often easy as well, and makes the estimate very close to the correct conversion.
Re: A mathematician's way of converting miles to kilometers
#10Fascinating that the second reply (or second best reply?) is an unreasonably angry response:
Who the hell needs all this .. Get lost [angry emoji]