Insignificant Digits
When using numbers as a part of their lexicon, people can screw them up in just the same ways that they can screw up words. Sometimes they're mistaken, but too much of the time they're aiming for a precision that isn't there or they're deliberately trying to mislead people: whatever the reason, it may look like math, but it's really an abuse of the language.
Exhibit A is a sign at the store in which I work. Canada officially uses the metric system, although most people I know still cook in the Imperial system (because logical or not, "a cup of flour" is just a whole lot easier to manage than "250 mL of flour, or "240 mL", or "225 mL", depending on your source). Every now and then the store, in a bid to sell more yarn, invites people to bring in knit or crocheted squares which will be put together into blankets for, I don't know, underprivileged children or something. Since it's an American company, the sign wants people to make eight-inch squares, but since it's going up in Canada, the measurement has been changed to centimetres. Now, 8 inches is pretty much exactly 20 centimetres, or as near as makes no nevermind, but some overzealous dolt with a calculator translated the sign, and customers are now asked to make "20.32 cm x 20.32 cm squares". I hope they have a micrometer to achieve that sort of precision.
The Canadian version is like this, only less so
Exhibit B is something I saw in the supermarket this morning: a Swanson's Hungry Man Dinner. (I didn't buy it! I just saw it in the freezer case!) They also make breakfasts, in case you were wondering. Over 1 pound of food!, the packaging trumpets--see? we do still use imperial measures in Canada--but if you look below, you'll see, in much smaller print, "455 grams". Now, a pound is almost exactly 454 grams--453.59, if you want to get fanatically precise. This means that the Hungry Man Dinner contains 1.4 grams more than a pound of food, and that's less than the weight of a dime, so in the most technical, nit-picking sense possible, there is more than a pound of food in the box. But the amount by which the meal exceeds a pound is actually less than the amount of sodium that's in most of these meals. (Just look at this: a Hungry Man XXL dinner, one and a half pounds of food, 5410 milligrams of sodium, two and a quarter days' worth of salt!) If you ever doubted that hornswoggling the gullible is the entire point of advertising, there's your proof.
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Speaking of food that'll kill you, I had some mortadella yesterday and am still alive to tell the tale. I have a feeling it wasn't imported from bell'Italia, because the texture suggested it was actually regular old ham that had been shredded and then compressed back into a round loaf, with little cubes of unshredded ham scattered throughout to break up the monotony. It was sliced paper-thin, as mortadella is evidently supposed to be, but unfortunately the texture meant that it mostly fell apart into scraps and tatters when I tried to peel the slices apart. This is what I get for buying supermarket food.
Exhibit A is a sign at the store in which I work. Canada officially uses the metric system, although most people I know still cook in the Imperial system (because logical or not, "a cup of flour" is just a whole lot easier to manage than "250 mL of flour, or "240 mL", or "225 mL", depending on your source). Every now and then the store, in a bid to sell more yarn, invites people to bring in knit or crocheted squares which will be put together into blankets for, I don't know, underprivileged children or something. Since it's an American company, the sign wants people to make eight-inch squares, but since it's going up in Canada, the measurement has been changed to centimetres. Now, 8 inches is pretty much exactly 20 centimetres, or as near as makes no nevermind, but some overzealous dolt with a calculator translated the sign, and customers are now asked to make "20.32 cm x 20.32 cm squares". I hope they have a micrometer to achieve that sort of precision.
The Canadian version is like this, only less soExhibit B is something I saw in the supermarket this morning: a Swanson's Hungry Man Dinner. (I didn't buy it! I just saw it in the freezer case!) They also make breakfasts, in case you were wondering. Over 1 pound of food!, the packaging trumpets--see? we do still use imperial measures in Canada--but if you look below, you'll see, in much smaller print, "455 grams". Now, a pound is almost exactly 454 grams--453.59, if you want to get fanatically precise. This means that the Hungry Man Dinner contains 1.4 grams more than a pound of food, and that's less than the weight of a dime, so in the most technical, nit-picking sense possible, there is more than a pound of food in the box. But the amount by which the meal exceeds a pound is actually less than the amount of sodium that's in most of these meals. (Just look at this: a Hungry Man XXL dinner, one and a half pounds of food, 5410 milligrams of sodium, two and a quarter days' worth of salt!) If you ever doubted that hornswoggling the gullible is the entire point of advertising, there's your proof.
+
Speaking of food that'll kill you, I had some mortadella yesterday and am still alive to tell the tale. I have a feeling it wasn't imported from bell'Italia, because the texture suggested it was actually regular old ham that had been shredded and then compressed back into a round loaf, with little cubes of unshredded ham scattered throughout to break up the monotony. It was sliced paper-thin, as mortadella is evidently supposed to be, but unfortunately the texture meant that it mostly fell apart into scraps and tatters when I tried to peel the slices apart. This is what I get for buying supermarket food.
posted by pyramus | 5:28 AM
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