Public Service Announcement

I have this one huge pet peeve with technical documents that only a few of you will truly understand. (If you're a liberal arts major, you might not even want to bother continuing to read.)

This always comes up when it comes time to review bids, and I always get cranky because of it. Now it's time to rant.

I like that you're trying to maintain some accuracy throughout your calculations. I understand that part of it. I do the same thing.

However, when it comes time to submit a document, there is no reason to give me viscosity to six decimal places. Or specific heat. Or temperature. I will never -- never -- NEVER -- measure any of those values (or flow rate, or pressure, or density) to that level of accuracy. I am not running an analytical lab. I'm running a system with a variable flow rate. Not variable as in plus or minus 0.0003 pounds per hour -- variable as in plus or minus 30%.

While it's great that you can give me such accuracy, I don't want to see it. At that point it becomes a useless string of numbers.

To all you fresh-faced engineers (ha! like I'm not...), keep this in mind: someone somewhere will look at your numbers and try to write a guarantee based on them. You do NOT want to try to guarantee performance to the fifth or sixth decimal point.

Plus, let's face it, all that print takes up valuable space.

Please -- apply some reason and cut it down a bit.

Thank you for your time.

[End transmission.]

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