Jc3s5h added a comment. In https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T105623#1657039, @daniel wrote, in part:
> > We can of course discuss if, when and how the explicit +/-X is shown to the > user. I'm completely open to that. One sensible suggestion was to hide it if > the actual uncertainty is the same as what we would assume from the decimal > representation. In that case, it's OK to hide it, I think. Maybe also if the > precision is better than what we would assume. Maybe. But in any case it's > crucial to understand that we *have* do consider uncertainty everywhere if we > want to allow conversion. I would always show the uncertainty if it comes from a source. This would let editors know that checking the uncertainty of a number is a lower priority than unsourced guesses about uncertainty. It also lets a reader know the referenced source could be checked to verify the uncertainty, in case what the reader was really interested in was the uncertainty of the number. > We could store "unknown", and then re-calculate the uncertainty every time we > need it, but why? What would that gain us? We could store the guess about uncertainty, but also mark it as unknown, so data consumers would be on notice they really ought to find a better source if they care about the uncertainty. > Well, in scientific literature at least, a number like 2.30 or 2.3e3 has a > definite uncertainty (resp significant digits). It's given by convention of > the notation. Would you consider that a guess, or a sourced uncertainty? In a scientific source I would certainly consider 2.30 or 2.3e3 as a sourced uncertainty if it was from a scientific source. For a number like 2300, I would also regard it as a sourced uncertainty. But I would also infer that the uncertainty of the number was not especially important in the article, or that the article, although from a scientific organization, was intended for a popular audience, or both. An example is a recent press release from the US Geological Survey, giving the elevation of Mt. Denali to the nearest foot. We can tell it is intended for a popular audience because the uncertainty was not explicitly stated, and because the elevation was given only in feet. One would expect that when the peer-reviewed journal article comes out, the primary unit of length will be the meter, with perhaps an occasional conversion to feet. TASK DETAIL https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T105623 EMAIL PREFERENCES https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/settings/panel/emailpreferences/ To: Jc3s5h Cc: Mike_Peel, Jc3s5h, thiemowmde, kaldari, daniel, Stryn, Lydia_Pintscher, Liuxinyu970226, Snipre, Event, Ash_Crow, mgrabovsky, Micru, Denny, He7d3r, Bene, Wikidata-bugs, Ricordisamoa, Kelson, MSGJ, Klortho, Wolfvoll, Aklapper, aude _______________________________________________ Wikidata-bugs mailing list Wikidata-bugs@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-bugs
