Waldvogel & Aschwanden
The Complexities of Calculating in Imperial Units
I have grown up in a metric world, but I guess that even the others know how complex and dangerous it is to calculate in Imperial Units, at latest since NASA lost a lander due to conversion issues.
To fully understand and appreciate the complexities, please follow the e-mail conversation which took place in November 2004. It has been edited for readability and to protect the ignorant:
Mail to all poster authors
The following mail was sent to all poster authors attending a certain conference taking place in the U.S., which shall remain unnamed (emphasis mine):
Subject: Poster information
There will be 25 easels available (enough for each of the event), with 30" by 40" (75cm x 100cm) poster boards. Poster presenters can tape 8.5x11 inch pages to the poster board, or tape on a "roll out" full size poster. There will be no power or table space available (e.g., for a laptop) - the posters are free standing. The easels will be ready in the first break of the afternoon, to give presenters a chance to hang their poster ahead of time.
How many 8.5"x11" pages do fit on a 30"x40" board?
A poster presenter from a U.S. institution (seemingly working toward a PhD), quoting the information given above, was inquiring:
Subject: Re: Poster information
How many 8.5x11 inch pages would I need for the poster board?
Be nice
OK, maybe I did confuse him with the units, as the page is actually 8.5x11 square inches. Or he was scared of having to present a poster. Or maybe computer science graduate students are not taught the advanced tricks of rectangular geometry in planar, Euclidean spaces anymore. I thus helpfully replied:
Subject: Re: Poster information
To fill a poster board of 30"x40" with 8.5"x11" pages, there are several options:
- Use 3*3=9 upright pages in a square; this will fill 25.5"x33", e.g. giving you a top border of 7" for a title and leaving 2.25" on each side
- Use 3*4=12 upright pages (total area=25.5"x44"), this again will leave 2.25" on each side, but give an overhang of 3", which might hang below the poster (or better yet, have the pages overlap by 1")
- Use landscape pages, 3*4=12 pages (area=33"x34", either with 1.5" overhang on each side or 1.33" overlap among the pages; this leaves 6" on the top for a title) or 3*5=15 pages (area=33"x42.5", with overhang of 1.5" each horizontally and 2.5" at the bottom or 1.33" horizontal overlap and 0.6125" vertical overlap)
- You can also use a page layout that will only use 7.5"x10" or 7.5"x8" of a page (please keep in mind that you still might want a border inside that area). That would allow 4*4=16 or 4*5=20, respectively, of these smaller pages to fit on the board.
Persistence
I believed I had provided all information anyone could ever want, and maybe much more than that. But a week later, the following mail arrived:
Subject: Re: Poster information
I have now prepared about 15 ppt. slide (landscape) printouts of size 8.5"x11", including the title page and a few back-ups, for the poster session. This should fit your poster board. Let me know if it won't.
Experiment design
I probably should have indicated this in my very first mail: Never trust strangers; instead set up an experiment and verify your results yourself.
Subject: Re: Poster information
If they can overlap as described in my original e-mail, they will. If you want to be sure that they do, lay them out on a large table and measure whether your layout fits within 30"x40".
I hope this will give him the confidence he needs to attend the conference.
Postscript
I did receive the following mail from a friend shortly after the conference.
Subject: Re: Poster information
I don't know the outcome of the particular person in your story. I do know, however, there was one presenter with a detailed "blue print" of his poster layout and he even had a tape measure with him. He spent the better part of the poster session PRECISELY taping his 8.5x11 inch sheets one at a time to the poster board. I casually suggested he might just lay the sheets on the board, arrange them to his liking, and then tape them down (and quickly get out to the presentation area so as not to miss the audience)... but he preferred to slowly build his poster one sheet at a time using his blue print.