I found an unexpected...issue...with iPhone's Siri when I asked it to do a calculation: It doesn't understand scientific notation.
I wanted to know the ratio of the mass of Jupiter to the mass of the Earth, so I asked Siri to calculate it. I gave it instrutions:
"Hey Siri, divide one point nine times ten to the twenty-seventh by five point nine seven times ten to the twenty-fourth."
It returned 3.18 x 1050, when the correct answer is 318.
It took me a minute to figure out that the calculation it did was
Siri treated multiplication and division equally, on the same level. It doesn't understand scientific notation. I really didn't expect that. But maybe I should have.
Nor does it understand a number in the form "one point nine e twenty-seven". She doesn't understand the "e".
It also gives the wrong answer, albeit a different answer, if you rotate the iPhone to the screen with the advanced functions and speak to it.
For some reason it now took "e 27" to be 10{20/7}, but got "e 24" correct as 1024.
Now I know. But I hope someone on a project team, when rushing during a dire crisis, doesn't use Siri to calculate a rocket trajectory or whatnot.
1 comment:
It seems like math should be within a computer's wheelhouse. But I've never had success with Siri, regardless of the task!
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