Dec 22 2008
-0º Fahrenheit
Yes, I am an incurable nerd who is easily amused, but I had to share this photo I took this morning. I happened to pass by the bank when the thermometer read -0º F. There are a couple of reasons it’s interesting to me. One is the obvious. Whoa -0º, that’s REALLY cold! The other is the software engineering implications. Obviously an unexpected bug condition in someone’s programming code. It was -3º earlier, but when it warmed up to 0º the minus symbol didn’t disappear.
Just thought I’d share one of life’s little ha-ha moments for any other geeks out there who are amused by these as well.
5 responses so far
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Thanks for sharing! I saw it right away on your Twitter post! We’re a little anal about that kind of thing in this household, esp. since my hubby is a rocket scientist and Mr. Precision.
So, who’s going to fix the bug?
Would it ve possable that it isn’t a bug? maybe it was -0.3, and the programmer has the display set at whole numbers?
Lisa, I’m not sure that this bug will ever be fixed. It’s not critical to the normal functioning of the device. But I should challenge the local school kids to see if they can track down the manufacturer for comment.
Brian, your explanation makes sense but it still is a bug to me because displaying a -0º probably shouldn’t happen, regardless of the reason for it. If the programmer didn’t intend to display a -0, but it does, that qualifies as a bug in my mind.
I suspect it’s neither bug nor precision issue but an unfortunate consequence of floating-point representation of the temperature, esp. if the display value is calculated from some sensor data.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IEEE_754_Single_Negative_Zero.svg
Tom! You did check out my blog! So Brian is probably correct in his guess. I still say it’s a bug, but I’m stubborn that way.