Dimensions of Confusion

Rich of March House

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Wednesday, May 9. 2007

Dimensions of Confusion

At work I've been asked whether a cupboard full of all sorts of interesting information can be emptied to make way for more poor souls to be squeezed into the office.  Since I don't really want to throw anything away I requested that the contents be packed up and sent to the archive place where old documents go to be lost in piles of dust.

For this to happen I have to fill in a form giving a lot of detail on how much it would cost to reproduce the material being stored, how important it is, and an estimate of "linear feet" it takes up.  I thought feet were already a linear measurement so I wrote off to ask what made a linear foot different from an ordinary foot.  The answer that came back was:

"Linear feet is the total number of square feet the material takes up in shelf space at present. eg 2 shelves 3 ft by 3 ft  = 18 sq ft." 

So I was wrong about linear feet being linear - they seem to be a unit of area being used as a proxy for measuring volume. 

Posted by Rich in Musings at 11:25 | Comments (10)
Comments
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Dratted statisticians! ;-)
#1 JG on 2007-05-09 12:16 (Reply)
This appears to be an airline concept that I bet is 1. American and 2. invented by some teenage control freak security idiot.
#2 Lordhutton on 2007-05-09 12:19 (Reply)
Clearly, linear feet are the number of square feet of document on your shelf divided by the depth of the shelves they have in the archives.
#3 sweavo (Homepage) on 2007-05-09 14:41 (Reply)
Wrong vector space?
#4 elo15e (Homepage) on 2007-05-09 16:20 (Reply)
Why is (or should it be 'are'?) there so much maths in your blogs?
#5 Lois (Homepage) on 2007-05-09 16:26 (Reply)
I like maths.
#5.1 Rich (Homepage) on 2007-05-09 16:34 (Reply)
As a mother and ex Maths teacher I'm really proud of my son's last comment
#6 Grandma on 2007-05-09 17:58 (Reply)
and he's married to a mathematician?
#7 elo15e (Homepage) on 2007-05-10 09:53 (Reply)
It is a way of getting morons to give info so other morons can work out a cube. I am sure there must be a better word than "linear", which is misleading. Oh yes. "Moron". "Moron feet"
#8 lordhutton on 2007-05-10 22:49 (Reply)
They want 'laminar' not 'linear'.
#9 Stu (Homepage) on 2007-05-11 08:14 (Reply)
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