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Name :   Hank Dietz
Organization :   University of Kentucky
Post Date :   9/29/2005

Section Comments
Section :  2.2.7.4.2
Page no. :  2-24
Line no.:  19-23
Comment :  The discussion states: "To convert to millimeters, multiply by 25.4 and then round to the nearest multiple of 5."  Taken literally, this is embarrassingly incorrect. As any gradeschool student knows, the rounding given in this formula has nothing to do with conversion between inches and millimeters.  Rather, it is an attempt to make both the inch and millimeter dimensions be intuitive integer numbers despite the fact that doing so yields ambiguous dimension values.

It would be better to consistently list measurements either all in inches or all in millimeters (e.g., as obtained using the rounding formula).  Alternatively, the section should be prefaced by an explanation that "rounded metric" values computed by the given formula differ by an error which will be considered as within an acceptable tolerance of the actual values for the purposes of this document.