Oh Dear

I just surfed into Stig’s blog, and he referred to this article in the Manchester Evening News.

I am astounded that people can be so innumerate that they do not know that -5 is a higher number than -6. I can understand how people find this confusing, but you just have to remember that if there is a minus sign it works the other way. Do these same people see a temperature of -15 on the weather and think – ooh, it’s going to be lovely, I’ll leave my coat at home? If so, here’s a message for them: never ever go to the Antarctic (that’s the one in the south with the penguins) or the Arctic (north with polar bears) – it’s not as warm as you think.

If we’d have stayed with fahrenheit we would still have this issue, but not until the temperature was a bit lower (0 fahrenheit is about -17 celsius [or centigrade, I gather that they’re the same])