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Comment by williadc | Hacker News Reader

For those who were annoyed by the inconsistent units in the story:

"International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation reporting about 7000 tonnes of crude oil spilling from tankers into oceans in 2017 alone."

".. explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig on 20 April 2010 and subsequent release of approximately 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico."

According to this site (https://www.reference.com/science/much-barrel-oil-weigh-b29e...) "In order to get a metric tonne of oil, one would need about 7.33 barrels of oil."

7000 tonnes ~ 51,310 barrels

4.9 million barrels ~ 668,485 tonnes

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Sometimes I wonder how numbers are regarded in journalism. From the outside it looks as if there was some cult around reproducing the exact string that the source uttered, but with no understanding.

Having been quoted in a newspaper article once, I can attest that journalists don't always care about precision when reproducing utterances.

Let's put journalists interview quotes on the blockchain! Then they can't be faked and everyone can ensure they are real!

False precision annoys me.

For example, an article might say someone travelled 1243 miles — very precise and authoritative journalism there. Of course, they were actually told they travelled 2000 km, clearly an approximation.

Length: Football fields

Capacity: Olympic-sized swimming pools

In France, I have noticed that journalists often say they were very weak in mathematics. Probably there is some kind of education effect that drives smart people weak in mathematics toward journalism. People opinion is very much influenced by journalists and I wonder if this selection bias is the cause of the bad image of mathematics (difficult, disconnected from the real world, ...).

Usually the exact string but with a conversion to Olympic swimming pools, London busses, Empire State buildings or other helpful units.

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