You Know I Know You Know What I Did Last Summer

It is July 2006, Sciencetext.com is still a dormant domain displaying nothing much more than a newsfeed from Sciencebase, while the Significant Figures blog languishes on the Google blogspot domain. Now, that we have taken control of the blog and rebuilt sciencetext.com as the new home for Sig Figs and blogging Tips-Tricks, I thought it might be timely to pick out a few of the oldy-but-goody items from this time last year.

First up us Temperature Tantrum. It never ceases to amaze me just how wrong journalist reporting on all things scientific can be in their interpretation of units, stats and other numerical phenomena. On this occasion, it was the BBC, falling down as temperatures rise.

Next, we picked up on New Scientist reporting that Photobox was having some fun with megabytes of storage space. At the time of writing, apparently, you could get 250 Mb of storage space for your digital photos for just £8.50212765957447.

In the late spring, we had had a piece on how to work out significant figures that would have gotten around Photobox’s numerical issues. While fun and games were also to be had with milligrams of mercury in The Times.

As the night’s began to draw in once more, the UK population caused concern, and one September morn, just as the kids go back to school, truanting percentages were on the cards.

Finally, as the last rays of summer faded into memory, thoughts of coming festivities and gift buying had us thinking about money and how it might be that a penny worth more than a penny could exist.

This occasional round up of significant happenings on the Sciencetext site is brought to you this week by the letter V, for vacation.