How Good Are You at Measuring by Eye?
@EugenesDDen (310)
Ireland
February 7, 2016 4:36am CST
Ok, this is something harmless you can try and not likely to cause any self injury!
Draw two points on a piece of paper at a distance you think should be 4 inches apart (or 10 cms if you live in metric land). Now measure the actual distance with a ruler or tape measure and see how accurate you are. I can normally do this to an accuracy of 1/4 inch, but just tried it now and got it to 1/16 inch. Can you do better?
3 people like this
4 responses
@EugenesDDen (310)
• Ireland
7 Feb 16
10% error, not bad, so lets see if anyone else can do better! It would be interesting to try different spacings to see whether the percentage error stays the same. I reckon my ability to judge 4 inches is from looking at 4" timber a lot when doing DIY projects!
1 person likes this
@sishy7 (27169)
• Australia
7 Feb 16
@EugenesDDen I figured the 'DIY' in your name had something to do with your 99.98% accuracy...
1 person likes this
@EugenesDDen (310)
• Ireland
7 Feb 16
@sishy7 Yes something like that
. I'm trying to spread my DIY knowledge empire across all social media.
. I'm trying to spread my DIY knowledge empire across all social media.1 person likes this
@EugenesDDen (310)
• Ireland
7 Feb 16
So that's about 12 %. An alternative you can try is drawing two lines at 90 degrees, and measure the result with a protractor.
2 people like this
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
7 Feb 16
I am generally quite good at estimating sizes, especially when it comes to knowing whether a piece of furniture will fit in a particular space or whether a hole is too large or too small for something to go into. I failed spectacularly at this particular test, however. Even after glancing at the 10cm mark on my ruler, the two marks I made were 7.5cm (just under 3 inches) apart!
I would have expected to do better than this, to be honest, though I have to say that it's not the sort of exercise that I have needed to do much recently.
1 person likes this
@EugenesDDen (310)
• Ireland
7 Feb 16
Well when you mention furniture, it reminds of me of when I made a bench for my computer years ago. Being over confident of my ability to measure by eye, I made the bench sufficiently narrow ( or so I thought) that it would fit through a doorway into an attic room... and you guessed correctly, it wouldn't fit! So I had to dismantle it. Luckily I had screwed it together and was able to disassemble and reassemble it in the room!
2 people like this
