Comments on: On square miles

By: bob

bob — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:29:09 +0000

Since the publication was the Los Angeles Times, if they wanted the readership to intuitively grasp the scope of the area they described, a good way to do so would have been to say "a little more than twice the size of the Greater Los Angeles Area."

Most people in Southern California can relate to "the LA area" in terms of size, which Wikipedia puts at about 4850 square miles (give or take an earthquake or two!). I think the mistakes in reporting were in trying to be too "scientific" and not "informative." What use is precision if you have no accuracy? ;o)

By: slabman

slabman — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:03:45 +0000

@carl – you’re right. That’s a back of envelop calc of the capital costs of the photovoltaics which doesn’t take into economies of scale , account running costs or infrastructure. When you start thiking about those last two, you might slightly question the practicalities. What might be workable in the sparsely populated open spaces of Arizona is photo-voltaic railroad track-beds. These would feed overhead wires to power electric trains. It’s at least as practical as the first scheme!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:46:46 +0000

Mark, that’s the cause of the confusion, though. The size you’re picturing is 10000 square miles (or 100 miles square). Personally, I think 100 miles square is the better way to phrase it because it’s easy enough to visualize it the way you said.

By: rates

rates — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:22:51 +0000

wow, it’s the power of language

By: johncorbin

johncorbin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:01:46 +0000

Speak for yourself, John. Plenty of people know what a square mile is and know the difference between 100 square miles and a 100-mile square.

What is a square yard? It is 9 square feet. They could form a square or a line or a random pile. The fact that the reporter was clueless about working area measurements is important part.

The source for the story probably wanted his/her solution to sound like not that big of an area. It is not about truth in modern journalism, it is about marketing. Lots easier to sell 100 square miles to the public than to sell 100 miles square.

By: gubaba

gubaba — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:01:02 +0000

Journalism is rife with these sorts of errors in the interpretation of scientific data. The consequence of this particular example of sloppiness is rather benign; I'm amazed at the things journalists misconstrue from the medical literature on a regular basis.

Anyhow, I see no problem with using the square mile as a unit. Its values are generally unimaginable like you've said. The trouble with your solution is that "100-miles-square" sounds entirely nonsensical to my ear. Maybe it's a simple matter of hyphenation: do you mean a "100-mile square"? In any case, it's still obtuse and not immediately intuitive.

By: jL

jL — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:35:33 +0000

I'm a little confused.

Wouldn't the words "100 square miles"—when interpreted in such a way that the words yield an "order of magnitude" meaning—work out to be a linear measurement?

Applying a context of area measurement becomes the device for disambiguating its meaning.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:22:23 +0000

"Miles square" is a cute but by no means universally recognized expression, and its coining is the root of the problem. If you want to explain so that someone who doesn't get the concept of the unit "square miles" can easily grasp, describe a square 100 miles on edge.

The lack of familiarity with square miles or square kilometers is a defect in math education more than anything else. Catering to that with constructs like "100 miles square", which really means "an area which would be equivalent to the area occupied by a square 100 miles on edge" is a pretty depressing suggestion. The point is the area; the shape of the area is irrelevant. Should we really just give up on the expectation that readers should be able to understand grammar school math? Or should we require warnings on such articles: "Danger: Really hard, Barbie-stumping math ahead! Do not read if you are offended by basic arithmetic or units of measure!" ;-)

By: carl

carl — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:59:24 +0000

Is 100-miles-square the correct way to say a square with 100 mile sides? I've never heard anyone refer to a 12-inches-square. It's a 12 inch square.

Of course the more interesting discussion is the actual issue of replacing almost half the Mojave desert with photovoltaic cells. And slabman, I assume $4.3 trillion would only be the cost of the actual cells, not including the potential maintenance required for a powerplant that's 10000 square miles or the infrastructure needed to get power to the rest of the country.

That said though, what's $4.3 trillion nowadays?

By: slabman

slabman — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:58:42 +0000

No doubt everyone spotted that I meant to say “$4.3trillion”…

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:59:37 +0000

Lord knows we can't possibly expect our schools to teach such tedious math, right? Or that people should remember their basic math lessons?

What do they teach in math classes now? I thought it was much tougher than when I was a kid back in the Jurassic 60s. Maybe I've been mistaken?