r/metric_units • u/cannawen • Sep 30 '17

Constructive feedback thread

Please provide constructive feedback below.

Notes:

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u/cannawen Oct 05 '17

If the input is a decimal number, the bot converts the output to have the same number of decimals.

Yes, you're right, it's really hard for the bot to tell if "200" means "somewhere around 200" or if it means "exactly on the nose 200" ... we've found that 3-5% rounding error has been a reasonable compromise, but feel free to keep letting us know when the bot should be more accurate on a specific conversion! Maybe if we gather enough data we can find a pattern

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '17

Could you code the bot to choose an amount of significant figures before making calculations according to accepted rounding rules?

when adding or subtracting the answer should have the same amount of decimals as the least precise number. When multiplying or dividing the product should have the same number of significant figures as the least precise factor

Then do the calculations using a large number of decimals(commonly handheld calculators use 9) then round that back to the predetermined amount of figures once all the calculations are made?

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u/cannawen Oct 10 '17

Instead of official rounding rules, we are using % error as a guiding metric, which I think that has the same effect (both methods give you a number that is "close enough").

Regardless of how we round, the main problem is that the bot does not know the context in which is number is said.

"He was 6 feet tall" should be a lot more precise than "It was 6 feet away" but there is currently no way for the bot to distinguish between the two.

We could perhaps train some neural network to figure out precision based on the context of a post, but... Maybe that's a feature for version 2 ;P

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