this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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My engineering brain says it's 3.25.
4% is ~ 5%. 10% of 75 is 7.5. To get the 5% I have to divide it by 2, so 4% of 75 is close to 3.25. I will have to multiply it with some safety coefficient at the end, so the exact value doesn't matter.
I'm confused by this statement, the answer is 3. Why do all these extra steps for a wrong answer?
It's not wrong, it's close enough. And the point it works with more numbers and more type of calculation. Let's calculate 4% of 1243. That's the same as 1243% of 4, right, much easier to calculate by simply changing the 2 numbers... While my method is the same, by simply rounding everything.
And in engineering you always multiply/divide your results by a 1.5 or 1.25 safety factor, depending on situation. So you don't have to calculate exact results, just close enough. E.g. G is always 10m/s2. π is only 3.14, the other digits doesn't matter.
Huh? It's not "close enough", it's exactly accurate. 4% of 75 is 3 exactly. I don't know where the rest of what you wrote comes from. This post is about pure arithmetic
That's the stupidest shit I have heard today. You should feel ashamed if you really are an engineer
That's how engineering is. In civil you can round π=5 for a lot of calculations. In astrophysics I've seen e=π=10
Rounding once may be okay but rounding multiple times and that errors add up. Astrophysics?! If im working with wood, i don't care measuring to 0.1 mm and it might be okay in astrophysics to use 10 for pi, but that doesn't make guessing your math correct in general.
Maybe we are doing things differently here in germany.