I was just looking around the internet about the Astronomical Unit (AU) thinking about our class lab, and I ran across this internet gem. Please note the subtitle of the page, a very reassuring "Science in Ancient Artwork."
It started out looking okay (probably because I skipped the first few paragraphs), and the numbers for his argument made sense in the first thing he was saying about Mercury/Sun distance as the AU. Then the arrows came up about some "patterns," if a sane person can really call them that--I feel like he was in a room lined with pictures and clippings on the walls with yarn or string or something sturdily holding his argument together.
Also, ratios don't have units Mr. Charles William Johnson, so I don't really know why you threw that bit in there. I get that the numbers vary, but it's not at all because of the units they're measured it. It's either an imprecise conversion being used, or just different numbers.
And one last word, I think you should go meet with my high school freshman science teacher Mr. McKenna about significant figures. Don't worry, he's a nice guy and won't judge you too much for what you're trying to do with them.
That was entertaining, although I admit I didn't read the whole thing! It shows how important your measurement methods are, and many we shouldn't be so sloppy when converting units...
ReplyDeleteAlso, this made me think that you can truly come up with evidence for anything you want if you paint the numbers a certain way...
I think you really just shouldn't convert units unless you have to. Also, it would be good to have a fundamental understanding of units so that you don't think they're different and any differences are probably just because of rounding/truncation, or you messing up the conversion by not having enough/too many sig figs.
ReplyDeleteOn your second point, I very much agree with that. If you don't know enough, or are willing to lie a little, you can come up with evidence to support whatever you like. I found the same type of thing when writing a paper for a political science class: I was reading a report about the problems with copyright violations, and the report was made by somehow who was either not very smart or wanted to make the data look a certain way.