Distance, in multiples of my height, from my birthplace:
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10km (Score:2)
Divide by two gives 5000, roughly. Greatest distance away would have been Europe in 1975 and 1997. Call it 12000km straight down. For most of my life I lived further away in the outer suburbs but I can afford to live closer to the city now.
stupid poll - should be millions, not thousands (Score:5, Insightful)
As a matter of fact, I currently live at a distance of about 1.2 million times my height from my birthplace. In the 1980s and 1990s, the distance was about 2.84 million times my height in a different direction.
Re: (Score:2)
That's quite an accurate number, given that on those kind of distances the curvature of the earth starts to play a significant role. Or were you living on a 5400 km high tower?
Re: (Score:2)
Some of us have a really good surface-linear grasp of how far we are from our birthplaces ... I can tell you to within 5 miles how far it is from here to my parent's home, for instance.
Are we really going *through* the earth's crust instead of across it to come up with the accurate number? Doubtful, as that's not a meaningful measurement.
I just did the math but don't feel like dredging it back up, I'm nearly 3 million times my own height from my birthplace. Moving across the US does that ya know.
Feel you're
Re:stupid poll - should be millions, not thousands (Score:5, Funny)
That's not so hard when they are only 9 feet above your head.
Re: (Score:2)
> That's quite an accurate number
> given that on those kind of distances the curvature of the earth starts to play a significant role.
We have these things called computers now which enable that kind of accuracy.
I'm 8453 kilometers from where I was born right now according to Wolfram Alpha. All I had to do to work this magic was put in the 2 locations separated by a pipe. Could have used Google Maps or my iPhone also.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I see your pedantry and raise you all in.
I'm afraid that's a string raise.
In the future, please endeavor to do your nitpicking in one continuous motion.
Re: (Score:2)
You guys need to get a grip. First, someone reads the title as "distance from workplace" and everyone else seems to have interpreted it as "distance from birthplace to workplace"
The poll never mentions work.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
right here (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know the exact place but it was in this county.
If you count the hospital then it could be farther.
Wait a second, the 15,000 value is only like 20 miles, unless you are like 100 feet tall.
Or it'sn't(a contraction of it's and isn't) in decimal.
Even 1.5 million is only 2000 miles.
We need logs in here.
Maybe what power of 10: 1 mile, 10 miles, 100 miles, etc.
Maybe we're supposed to round our height up. (Score:2)
> Wait a second, the 15,000 value is only like 20 miles, unless you are like 100 feet tall.
Given the range, we clearly have to round our height up to a sensible measure common to the comp sci field to make the distribution of distances more reasonable.
Mmm... how tall is one library of Congress?
Obligatory Simpson's Quote (Score:2)
"My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!" -Abe Simpson
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Time and space (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you should be counting the distance from where your mom was at the moment you were born. Taking into account my current geographical position, the rotation of the earth, the time of the year, the movement of the solar system through the galaxy, and the expansion of the universe... my answer is still "More than 15,000".
Re: (Score:2)
Try t'isn't instead. Sounds better. Or even better, just go with tisn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Poor choice of options... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
No, It did exactly as designed, separating the european and the american users.
Americans thinks 100 years is a long time, and Europeans thinks 100 miles is a long way.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Americans thinks 100 years is a long time, and Europeans thinks 100 miles is a long way."
No. We just think "miles" is some odd unit not really worth figuring out.
Re: (Score:2)
I was born in Hexham (North of England) which is 154.2km or 95.8 miles from Edinburgh, Scotland where I live (according to Google maps, via the A68).
I am 6'1" tall or 1.85m. Thus I live about 83,000 times my height from my place of birth, which I wouldn't say was particularly unusual. My wife was born in Edinburgh, so she's much closer.
Note: as a scientist (and maths PhD), I use only metric, with the exception that I measure my height in feet, and my weight in stones. That doesn't mean terribly much, I can'
Re:Poor choice of options... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, if it's 6 months since your most recent your birthday, you're about 300 million km from your place of birth anyway.
Also, the galaxy rotates.
Re: (Score:2)
My birthplace has moved with me all this time. That said, it's still about 22 miles away, which puts me in the "over 15,000" category. Honestly, "less then 15,000" would have been a more sensible option...
Re: (Score:2)
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Dude, it's a ratio. It's the same number whether it's Système international or Imperial.
This metrification push has gone too far. What next, metric years? Metric pi?
(Yeah, I'm joking)
Re: (Score:2)
I for one would welcome metric years. We could finally move off a 24 hour day.
Granted I would prefer to live in a space station than on the surface, but that's a pipedream. (no puns intended, even tho this comment seems to bristle with the opportunities)
Re: (Score:2)
The idiosyncrasy of USA to continue using measurement systems imposed by they conquerors more than 200 years ago is flabbergasting. I guess rules and weights manufacturers did not got the word about the tea parties.
That being said, I find my own country's custom even worst. It may not be well known but in Mexico we keep using the "Letter" paper size 8½ by 11 inches (exactly 215.9 mm × 279.4 mm) [wikipedia.org], which makes sense only in Imperial units... nevertheless Mexico uses the metric system for everything
Re: (Score:2)
Stockholm to Osaka gives me about 4.6 million. So, "more than 15000" I guess.
Ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you consider your Mom is your birthplace and, like most ./ers, live in her basement.
Re: (Score:2)
That certainly makes the "I was born right here!" option much more disgusting...
So if your mother is sitting across the room ...
Re: (Score:2)
Nearly everyone in the modern world lives more than 15,000 times their height away from their birthplace.
You mean "nearly everyone in the developed world", right? I suspect that more than 50% of the world's population lives within the same 20 miles from where they were born. 90% hasn't ever been on an airplane.
:P , and I have never worked outside my city.
Anecdotically, I voted the first option because I happen to work in the same street the hospital I was born is
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
I scoff at your insignificant height's inability to make the poll options relevant, puny human!
Re: (Score:2)
If you were born in a metropolitan area and you still live in the same metropolitan area chances are fairly high that you are within 30km of your birth. It wouldn't shock me if 75% of the US population is within 30km of their birth. Of course those demographics don't mesh perfectly with this site.
Forthcoming slashdot poll (Score:5, Funny)
1 grain of rice with my dinner
3 grains of rice with my dinner
50 grains of rice with my dinner
More than 50 grains of rice.
Tune back in for more fascinatin insights. Try the fish,
Re: (Score:2)
Are you an Arab? Apparently they can survive a whole year on one grain of rice. [youtube.com]
Units (5core: -15000, f1amebait) (Score:5, Funny)
Can we guess the (a) nation and (b) system of units familiar to the author? I have narrowed it down to this: either (a) is Liechtenstein, or (b) is anything other than SI.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
except if you are very very tall
Re: (Score:2)
I'm very tall. The radius limit works out to 30.3 km in my case.
Now, if you mean freakishly, inhumanly, monstrously gargantuan tall... yeah. Robert Wadlow, on record as the tallest human in history, was 8 feet 11 inches tall (and since he was American you metric weenies can just google [google.com] it yourself). That works out to a maximum radius of not quite 41 km. Or, less than a marathon.
Yeah, if you haven't exceeded the cited limit, you really haven't gotten around much.
Some will argue that if you live in a big city
Re: (Score:2)
I know, it's like a perfect match of making something extremely complicated, dependent on irrelevant factors like if you're a midget and on top of that being completely useless. If this had been a piece of code instead of a poll, it'd belong on the TheDailyWTF.
Re: (Score:2)
The Units should be in Belgiums (assuming longest portion is 280km.) So I live 28 Belgiums from my birthplace.
Successful poll (Score:5, Funny)
The question: valuable
The options: worthless
To make a couple thousand people do exercises with units, dimensionless numbers and simple maths: priceless
so true (Score:2)
The number's somewhere around 1.1 million. I go check out the poll options and. . .
Victim of YAGNI [slashdot.org], again!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It's also a stupid test to see if people remember to convert the units. Because apparently my dumb-ass is 6mi tall.
Re: (Score:2)
The options are not worthless, but aren't realistically scaled for a decent distribution of responses.
Essentially, the question asks how many of yourself you'd need to lay down, end-to-end, in order to get from where you are to where you were born.
The possible answers should be logarithmically scaled according to a distribution between 1 and 10,000,000 which, pulling numbers out of my backside, is roughly half the distance around the world in units of a 6-foot-tall person.
The logarithmic scale should group
The maximum is about 10 million (Score:2)
The circumference of the earth is about 40,041 km. Assuming I live at an antipode to where I was born, the distance would thus be 20,020 km. A typical height would be about 2 m, so a rough maximum to the scale (assuming you still live on Earth, that is!), would be 10,000,000-12,000,000 or thereabouts (anyone over 15 million would probably be a dwarf or a child, since even if you lived in orbit you would likely come closer to your actual birthplace at times). I myself am presently at about 7,358,400 times
Re: (Score:2)
The circumference of the earth is about 40,041 km. Assuming I live at an antipode to where I was born, the distance would thus be 20,020 km. A typical height would be about 2 m, so a rough maximum to the scale (assuming you still live on Earth, that is!), would be 10,000,000-12,000,000 or thereabouts
I was thinking the maximum would be about 7,926.28 miles (12,756.1 km)
as that's the diameter of the Earth. At a typical height of 1.75m, that would be 7 289 142 body lengths, a few more if you were born in a tower or live in one.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're arguing which frame of reference to use. Nice. Not sure if it gets you anywhere though. But taking the centre of the Milkyway as reference would give you at the age of 23,5 years a distance of about 165 billion (USA billions with 9 zeroes) km or 100 billion miles.
But then there are other frames of reference, like the mass centre of the local Virog Cluster, and then you get even much higher numbers.
Moms room from the basement? (Score:4, Funny)
Trick Question (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a trick question to see who is paying attention.
Re: (Score:2)
I was at first reluctant in believing that poll makers would have messed up so I calculated a dozen times just to make sure I'm not the dumb one. Turned out I'm not
3,768,452 (Score:2)
using a great circle route
Over 15000 (Score:2)
Unless my math is off...
Born 48602
currently at 60605
distance (according to google maps): 305 miles
305 miles in feet is 1610400 (according to google)
I am 5'6" (5.5 feet) tall
1610400 / 5.5 == 292800
Wolfram | Alpha to the rescue (Score:4, Informative)
query: (distance derby london) divided by 6ft
answer: 101,377 [wolframalpha.com]
Google to the rescue (Score:2)
Search Google with
950 miles / (5 feet 7 inches) =
and you'll get the answer. Heck, you'll get the answer before pressing Enter via the result shown in "search suggestions".
Re: (Score:2)
521737 times for me: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(597+mi+in+ft)+%2F+(6+ft.+1%2F2+in.) [wolframalpha.com]
368 for me (Score:2, Interesting)
Dimensional analysis (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
maybe that's the point of the poll?
this is the dumbest fucking poll in years (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps a poll rewrite is in order.... (Score:2)
The movement of people across national borders and continents might be more interesting than pure distance measures, at least to me.
The US, the labor force is highly mobile, and can move thousands of km without any large changes in environment and language. Labor force movement across international borders would be much more interesting, though our EU zone friends might screw up the numbers (count EU countries as one nation? Their labor force mobility between nations is lower than between US states, but s
way more (Score:2)
I live in Ohio, USA and was born in Paris, France.
If I was living in New York it would be
$ bc -l
5832*1000/1.73
3371098.26589595375722543352
3 millions...
stupid poll
898,415 is greater than 15,000 (Score:2)
Here's another vote for "poll author should turn in his geek card". Poll options should at least recognize diameter of earth as the obvious upper option; a real geek would take space/time astronomical motion into account and compute where in the Earth's orbit he was born vs. right now, and then realize galactic rotation & trajectory should be taken into account as well.
Diameter of Earth, plus distance to other planets (Score:2)
The diameter of the Earth would be in the middle range. The diameter of the solar system would be the next number up, followed by the diameter of the galaxy and the 'diameter' of the known universe.
Insufficient Information (Score:2)
C'mon people .. this is a /. poll. Is a little precision too much to ask?
Not meant for large countries (Score:2)
The poll is obviously not meant for large countries where political entities like states or provinces are bigger than many European countries.
Re: (Score:2)
It's relatively pointless period except if you've grown up and still live in the same city.
Over half a million (Score:2)
9600000 (Score:2)
approx 10000 miles
Units of measures (Score:2)
Oddly enough, the Civil War reenacting unit I'm with measures some distances in Ryans and Gunthers, who were a pair of six foot plus tall members of the unit. If we needed something measured out, they would just have to lay down or stretch out their arms.
Re: (Score:2)
(Yes, I know it is actually "Gunter's chain". It is often spelled with a "h" even by surveyors, though.)
Over 147 Thousand Eds, As the Ed Drives (Score:2)
Pretty close (Score:2)
I"m 5033.6 multiples of my height from the hospital I was born in.
That is of course as the crow flies, not as the car drives.
Re: (Score:2)
I"m 5033.6 multiples of my height from the hospital I was born in.
That is of course as the crow flies, not as the car drives.
How about as the worm burrows?
1,240,800 (Score:2)
I'm short.
A conversion table (Score:5, Informative)
Assuming a height of 5'6" (1.68 meters), the units convert like this:
3000 heights = 3.125 miles = 5.03 kilometers
6000 heights = 6.25 miles = 10.06 kilometers
9000 heights = 9.375 miles = 15.09 kilometers
12000 heights = 12.5 miles = 20.12 kilometers
15000 heights = 15.675 miles = 25.15 kilometers
Pretty much, unless you are in the city you were born in, your answer should be more than 15,000.
According to Google Maps, I am 1,234 miles by car from where I was born. I am 6 feet tall, which means I am 1,085,920 heights from my birthplace.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is a terrible poll. (Score:2)
Seriously miscalibrated options (Score:2)
259.63 mi * 5280 ft/mi = 1,370,846.4 ft
1.3M ft / 5'11" = 231692.35 sexybombers, more than an order of magnitude greater than the biggest option
And that's just from one end of New York State to the other. Miscalibration FTL
me! me! me! (Score:4, Funny)
Interesting, so I could lay myself out 9.2 million times between where am I and where I was born. Of course, a significant portion of those me's would drown. And I don't have a cloning machine. And even if I did, after I made the second me, we would probably start arguing about which is the REAL me, and never get anywhere 9.2 million of me. But still, interesting I guess.
Just imagine it, more than an entire New York City's worth of me ;P
Range too small (Score:5, Funny)
I kept double checking my math but yes, I am over 2.1 million GameboyRMH-heights from my birthplace, and this poll doesn't even go into the hundreds of thousands.
Up next, a poll on what temperature it is where you are!
1. 0-0.1C
2. 0.1-0.2C
3. 0.2-0.3C
4. 0.3-0.4C
5. Over 0.4C
6. Absolute Zero
Silly options (Score:3, Interesting)
What a retarded poll, even the furthest option (>15,000) is only 25-30km distance or so. You could be in the same city and still have to select the furthest option.
For me, the answer is:
Great circle distance from me to hospital I was born in: 241.12 km. From Dickson ACT - Camperdown NSW (Australia).
My height: 178 cm.
241,120 / 1.78 = 135,461 height multiples.
Was in America last week though so would have been tens of millions then :)
Re:Units of Measurement? (Score:5, Informative)
The unit of measurement is your height.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, so assume the user is a generous 6 feet tall. 6 * 15000 = 90,000 feet / 5280 feet per mile. Not even 18 miles.
I live about 60 miles by car, 40 direct path from where I was born.
Re: (Score:2)
You really need to go back to school, because it doesn't matter.
If you're 6 foot tall and live 15,000 times your height away, you live 90,000 feet away
6 foot is two yards. 15,000 x two yards is 30,000 yards away. 90,000 feet is 30,000 yards
6 foot 182.88 cm. 182.88 cm * 15,000 is 2,743,200 cm
2,743,200 cm is 27,432 m
27,432 meters is 27.432 km
27.432 km is exactly 90.000 feet is exactly 1,080,000 inches is exactly 27,432,000 millimeters.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Which is almost brilliant, except that a 486 isn't a Pentium.
It's tempting to think that Weird Al was actually singing about you!
Re: (Score:2)
So's google calculator.
Type 200 km / 2 m into google. You'll get 100'000 (a dimensionless number).
Now if you were to calculate it entirely in metres, 200000 m / 2 m = (suprise suprise) 100'000.
If you were to calculate it entirely in kilometres, 200 km / 0.002 km = (prepare to be amazed) 100'000.
Dividing a length by a length will always give a dimensionless number. And the units used are irrelevant provided that you calculate them out properly. You didn't
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Uhh.. a bit over 15,000 (Score:5, Funny)
A really absurd set of options (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this is a stupid poll, because the options are so weighted into absurdly small numbers.
For a 6 foot person, the first option is that you work between zero to 500 feet from your birthplace, and the second option is that you work between 500 and 1000 feet of your birthplace! Yow-- I suppose this is true if you actually work in the hospital you were born in. My guess is that approximately zero percent of the slashdotters have this as true.
In general, I comment that the options should be exponentially increasing (which these aren't), but in this case, the answers are so absurdly low, even factors of two increases in the range wouldn't make the poll useful.
My only hypothesis is that the purpose of the poll is to determine how many people read and understand the instructions, and answer a poll correctly. (From the above listing, the result seems to be about 58%).
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If they're worried about units they should have just used these options (or something along the same idea)
-same street
-same suburb
-same city/town
-same state
-same country
-same continent
-same planet
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Only five states away (Score:2)
My numbers check in at roughly 1.13 million. I would only have to drive through parts of five states to get there. Western states.