Hacker News Reader

Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

  > you’d get 2,113 grams of calcium

Perhaps the author was using the comma as the decimal separator? I know that the Norwegians do this.

View on HN

Most countries/languages use a comma as the decimal separator - it's the English-speaking world that's unusual for using a dot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:...

The map you linked suggests that dots are standard in both China and India as well, which probably means that the majority of humans and economic energy use dots not commas.

2,113 grams seems totally reasonable.

With too many significant digits though.

I wouldn't expect a non-engineering journalist to understand or care about sig figs, nor does it matter

I assume any translation service would account for this.

As far as I know, commas as the decimal separator aren't used anywhere in the English world. Although, perhaps the author was not a native speaker, but still personally writing in English and made the mistake.

That's a lot of sig-figs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com