Thursday, April 02, 2020

Big Error in "The Uninhabitable Earth"

by David Wells-Wallace. Page 170 -


- David Wells-Wallace, The Inhospitable Earth, pg 170

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but 100 M units at $30 k/unit is $3 trillion, not $30 trillion. So then the last number is $30 T, not $300 trillion.

Big difference!!

Getting the arithmetic right means a lot to me, and the units, and the basic physics, etc. I'm baffled about why none of Well-Wallace's pre-publication readers or editors didn't see this error and correct it. I hope no one does this for my book.

4 comments:

Thomas said...

Since you are complaining about proof reading. Is it "The Uninhabitable Earth" or "The Inhospitable Earth"?

David Appell said...

Yes, I got that wrong at first, but corrected it within about 10 minutes !

David Appell said...

Anyway, a misspelling is nothing at all like being off by a factor of 10.

Said I.

Ned said...

Depends what you misspell, David. Even a simple missing comma could have dire consequences:

"Let's eat, grandma!"

"Let's eat grandma!"