Thursday, June 30, 2011

Why does the MSM use such odd analogies for measurements?

Why, in stories such as this, do we equate liquids (concrete) to olympic swimming pools and solids such as steel, to the number of Eiffel towers?
These aren't units of measure that help explain anything better than the cubic feet and tons that were used in the article. If people don't get cubic feet, so be it, but I don't think telling them it would fill up a football field to a depth of 10 feet really gets the point across any better.
Chalk it up to my scientific background, but that sort of thing in articles annoys me.

Best way to sum up the article? This bridge is really long and makes getting to an island 20 minutes faster.
There, no crazy analogies needed.

1 comment:

Daddy Hawk said...

Granted, precision is preferable to vague analogy; however, as a visual person myself, it helps some of us to understand the scope of a measurement when we can compare it to something we can relate to such as the football field you mention. Think of the scene in "Armageddon" where they are talking about the size of the asteroid. Billy Bob Thornton's character cuts through the technical measurements and says "It's the size of Texas, Mr. President."