Chopping a number down to size by using the right unit conversion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 7, 2024 there is an article by Sally Krutzig at the Idaho Statesman titled Half of Boise Foothills wildfire contained as blaze reaches nearly 10,000 acres. It said the fire then covered an area of 9,892 acres. Those units are how our federal government reports fires, like on theirInciWeb site.

 

I think most people have difficulty visualizing a large number like 10,000. But we can chop it down. The Wikipedia article on an Acre says a square mile is 640 acres. That 9,892 acres converts to just 15.46 square miles. That’s a bit more than a 3 mile by 5 mile rectangle. And the much larger Lava fire west of Lake Cascade covers 97,585 acres or 152.5 square miles – corresponding to slightly more than a 10 mile by 15 mile rectangle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What about even larger areas? Most of the country can think by comparison with the land area for our smallest state of Rhode Island (shown above on a U. S. map) - 1,034 square miles. Here in Idaho we could report it in terms of the land area for Ada County – a similar 1053 square miles.

 

Back on July 12, 2016 I blogged about How to make statistics understandable.

 

The cartoon man with an axe was adapted from this image at Openclipart.