NAQ

What does "NAQ" stand for?

"Not-So-Frequently Asked Questions", mostly because we have a blog readership of probably something like 6.02214141070409084099072E-23 people*, so it's not like any of these questions can be asked that frequently, anyway...

What's up with your sig figs, anyway?

Significant figures, or sig figs, are important in science because they denote how accurate a measurement is. However, as much of our blog content relies heavily on theory and estimation, and the exact values that we do use come from many different sources (though we do try to make sure that they are reputable and that any differences in data for the same measurement are reasonably small), we feel that following normal sig fig rules is meaningless because there is simply so much room for error in our calculations. Most of the questions answered on this blog are Fermi questions and thus are not meant to be answered exactly, but rather only to the correct degree of magnitude (compared to the actual value, if it has been measured elsewhere). Generally, the author of the post will include as many significant figures on a particular value as he or she deems reasonable (for example, many of our calculated values are rounded to the nearest thousandth), but as all of the necessary calculations to find these values are included in each blog post, those who would like more sig figs can easily find them themselves by redoing said calculations.

How do you format numbers of great magnitude and/or significantfigureance? How do you indicate mathematical operations?

Generally, numbers with many digits are written with spaces (instead of commas or periods) between every set of three digits; for example, the value "3 601 500.012 34" represents "three million, six hundred one thousand, five hundred and one thousand, two hundred thirty-four hundred-thousandths". Scientific notation is indicated by placing an "E", followed by the value of the exponent on the 10, after the value itself; for instance, "3.08E5" = "3.08 * 10^5" = "308000". This blog uses standard symbols for mathematical operations; however, it should be noted that, to minimize ambiguity, multiplication is always indicated by an asterisk (*) or occasionally by parentheses (()), and never by an X (x). This means that "5 * 9" and "(5)(9)" would both be valid ways to write "5 times 9" on this blog, whereas "5 x 9" would not.


*Note that Mr. Melby counts as** one mole of people, so if he read this blog, we would very quickly become the most popular website in the history of the blagoblag.

**Mr. Melby is not merely a lowly plebeian, or even one mole of them... Rather, he is the greatest king ever to have ruled the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. (That is an objective, scientifically proven fact.)