I was at a doctor's office a month ago, and after they took my height, weight, blood pressure, mother's maiden name and fingernail salinity, they came back in a couple of minutes and handed me a little print-out of all these fact-like bits plus some extra -- including my surface area.
I haven't run the numbers but I'll just bet the software that calculated that number was based on the assumption I was of uniform density roughly equal to water, and spherical. Also, WTH? Why figure it? Why tell me? To make providing a hospital gown simpler? So I know how much suntan lotion to buy? What? --It's probably required somewhere in ACA-Obamacare. It sounds like something Congress would want.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
10 comments:
It's a questionable statistic, but I suppose it's better than having TSABot crawling up and down your epidermis.
I'm given to understand that there is a parody of engineering thought processes that begins "Assume a spherical horse."
Ritchie, it's a joke about mathematicians: "...assume all horses are identical and spherical..." One version here, as told by an Atomic Nerd.
I was tickled to discover that I'd become spherical racehorse myself.
I find it a little creepy that they calculate a patient's surface area. That's just a little too "silence of the lambs" to me.
My last doctor visit was a scene from Monty Python.
They did the same thing them my vastly ovewieght doctor came in and told me my blood pressure was too high.
Do I use add salt to my food? Do I exercise? Do I have a history of heart related disease in my family? MY weight and blood chemistry were in the right place. He asked if I had any ideas.
I told him it might be the fact I sat in his waiting room for 2 hours filled with a bunch of sickly screaming kids while their yuppie parents watched The View playing on the TV.
Gerry
From what I can tell by your photo, your surface area looks just fine.
Mike
Oh yes, it is a new effort to make sure we are all human, and to measure those that don't measure up, but since I am of the higher IQ portion of the intelligence scale, until compared with the giant squid, I won't worry.
Those damn giant squids! We may never again see a human champion on "Jeopardy." Scientists should've never found them. It's too late now.
Somewhere in the basement of a healthcare software company is a coder who is still amazed that his little joke made it through QA.
http://www.amazon.com/Consider-Spherical-Cow-John-Harte/dp/093570258X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1388324184&sr=1-1&keywords=spherical+cow
If this is the book I remember, it's a pretty good introduction to calculating rough estimates. And that _ought_ to be mandatory for everyone, especially journalism majors, except I doubt that most of them could handle even 2nd grade arithmetic...
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