"guidance set out by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers recommends supermarkets maintain a temperature of between 66.2F to 69.8F in the winter and between 69.8F and 73.4F in the summer. Room temperature is generally considered to be between 68F to 77F."
Does it drive anybody else a little nuts when newspapers don't either 1) leave the numbers in their original units and put the conversion in parentheses (or vice versa) or 2) round sensibly? It's misleading to suggest that anybody is measuring supermarket temperature to the tenth of a degree Fahrenheit by using so many significant figures.
It would both help people understand the metric system and be a more accurate description of the situation to say that what's actually specified is 20 degC +/- 1 degC in the winter and 22 degC +/- 1 degC in the summer.
Reminds me of body temperature. In the US we're taught that the standard body temperature for a human is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know about anyone else, but when I was young I thought this was very specific and must mean that a temperature variation of a few tenths of a degree is worth noting. Turns out 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is just a direct conversion from 37 degrees Celsius.
As a non-American, the sentences are basically unreadable when they don't give the Celsius conversions (actually, in this case, the original values). The only thing I know is that 100F is roughly 37C. I have to get out a conversion tool. Doesn't Forbes have an international audience?
Does it drive anybody else a little nuts when newspapers don't either 1) leave the numbers in their original units and put the conversion in parentheses (or vice versa) or 2) round sensibly? It's misleading to suggest that anybody is measuring supermarket temperature to the tenth of a degree Fahrenheit by using so many significant figures.
It would both help people understand the metric system and be a more accurate description of the situation to say that what's actually specified is 20 degC +/- 1 degC in the winter and 22 degC +/- 1 degC in the summer.