Industry body calls for greater scrutiny of patients with multiple repeat prescriptions to tackle ‘growing problem’
  • esc@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    9 days ago

    Its how people think really, when someone builds a house and needs foundation (for example) they don’t use 37 bathtubs or 1,5 swimming pools of concrete, they use cubic metres. When someone trains they don’t use 1 to 2 donkey of weight, they use actual measurable easily weights. When someone travel they don’t travel 17000 snakelengths to another country. You can imagine all of these measuremental aids without problems, and they are relatable and known to any child. They just sound ridiculous and nonsensical and don’t actually convey anything that can’t be used interchangably with ‘a lot’.

    • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zipEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      No, it’s just not how people think, and there’s good scientific research to back that up. Our numerical intuition doesn’t do large numbers, that’s why we have representational systems like decimal notation, and it has to be developed. We have to be learn even basics, like that 3 × 7 = 21; numbers like 100,000 cubic metres fall into the mental category of “large,” unless you put in the mental effort to break that down into column 1m by 1m that stretches from your city to the next 5 times.

      Journalists, and the NPA in this case, are going for a visceral impact. What’s this irrelevant talk of building a foundation? Were they publishing blueprints, or an engineering brief? Or even a context in which precise quantities matter? No, it was an article about wasted medication in England, and they exactly did want a quick way to convey “a lot”, and since most people in Britain do know what a swimming pool looks like, it’s an apt visual metaphor. (By the way, 17,000 snakes would be a terrible visual metaphor, again, because the number is too big.)

      We poke fun at the weird comparisons in the “anything but metric” community, so I turned it around, and the whole joke here is that stating it as 187,000 megaliters is more difficult to grasp quickly, and doesn’t actually add useful information in this context.

      But, maybe I’m wrong. How is the precise volume of medicine wasted annually in England relevant in your life?