You local HSBC is 0.5320458941752867 miles away
WE normally rather like it when banks are accurate. You know, count our money correctly, manage to send the new credit card to the right address, that sort of thing. But it is possible for them to perhaps be just a little bit over-enthusiastic.
Measuring from my parent’s house to the nearest HSBC branch it tells me that it is 0.5320458941752867 miles.
Exactly.
This is perhaps rather more accuracy that we really need:
17 decimal places represents atomic-scale accuracy. This means we now know just how far it is to our handiest HSBC to within a few electrons, which is extremely useful.
One slight problem with that level of accuracy is that the distance will change dependent upon the weather. A layer of rainwater for example will change the last couple of digits. Similarly, the shrinkage of a really dry spell change them again.
Wouldn’t it be easier for them to just tell us to within a few feet? That way they wouldn’t need to keep measuring the distances to take account of continental drift and so on. They’d be able to take all those people off surveying and have them on the phones ready to answer our calls for example….
Posted: 6th, January 2012 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
