They don’t know what they’re doing
Friday, February 27th, 2009 By Mike MaurerAnyone looking for evidence that our government Solons are clueless can find it in Governor Strickland’s budget. There is a series of numbers in there, nevermind what for, that constitute an index that is to be multiplied by a budget, a dollar figure, to calculate an adjustment and therefore a marginal payment from the state.
Here is an example of an index figure: 1.38316738407939
That’s quite a number. Fourteen digits after the decimal. Boy, that must show that they’re really accurate, right? These people must be working really hard to be precise, right? I mean, you know, that knucklehead Bob Taft, you could imagine him knowing what a decimal point was, we’d hope, anyway, and maybe on a good day he could go all the way to, oh, say two decimal places: 1.38
But we’ve had enough of him. Now we have a governor who cares. Who is expert. He’s going to beat Taft’s best day by, not one decimal place, not, two decimal places, no, he’s going all the way to 14. (Eleven was taken.)
This is nothing short of idiocy. We poor saps in the general public might not know these things, but when these goofballs step up to the plate to “solve” problems with millions, billions and trillions of our dollars, then there ought to be at least an ounce of common sense in the lot of them.
This is called “significant digits,” which simply means the numbers have real meaning. If I give you a plastic ruler and ask you to measure the governor’s brain size, you’ll get it within, say, one-eighth of an inch, let’s say 6.8 inches. Maybe if you’re really careful you’ll get it to about the half way mark after that, say 6.85. Now, if you have an electron microscope, then maybe you’ll get it to something much more precise, maybe something like six or seven decimal places on the inch, 6.8329221. Which number is more important? It depends on your purpose. If you’re comparing the governor’s brain to a coconut, the 6.85 will probably do. If you’re a doctor giving him a brain transplant, you might need a few more digits so you can make sure to fill up the empty spaces reasonably well.
How much difference does 14 digits make? You have to take away the last five digits to get to even one penny for a school district with a $100 million budget. Seven digits to get to a dollar, and 12 digits to get to a tenth of a percent difference. Find me a school treasurer who has predicted his school budget within one tenth of a percent from one year to the next in all of Ohio history, and I’ll carry Bill Phillis around Capitol Square on my back in front of every television camera you can muster.
These people don’t know what they’re doing. But it’s for the children, so let’s give them $1.38316738407939 trillion, lickety split.
Tags: digits, significant
