Happy Pi Day Everyone

[Stan_Lite]

Originally Posted by Kreeeee

An incredibly rough, rough estimate.

Not all that rough. If someone asks me the approximate volume of a storage tank measuring 10 metres in diameter by 10 metres high, it doesn't really matter whether I say it's 785.398163 cubic metres or 785.71 cubic metres. He probably only wants to know that it holds just shy of 800,000 litres. The difference being, I can work out the second figure in my head in about 20 seconds and can answer almost immediately, for the first figure I'd need to find a calculator.

It depends on where you are and what you're doing. It's very rare in my line of work to need to be that accurate - when you're looking at an 800,000 litre tank, 0.04% error is usually good enough for an estimate. If, on the other hand I worked with pharmaceutical equipment and I needed to know the exact volume of a 5 microlitre pipette, 0.04% error would be unacceptable.