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by Steve44 1202 days ago
> You might have one thing measuring fuel burn rate in grams/second and another in kg/second.

One of my jobs is reporting on packaging weights[1] in the UK and it's not uncommon to have this problem when I request data.

For example we request in Kgs, but one manufacturer sent back the report table of numbers in grams. That meant the thin plastic sleeve a tube of paper coffee cups comes in was reported at 30Kgs rather than 30g.

These components are all taxed / levied at various stages in the supply chain so being out by a factor of 1,000 can make a significant difference - we sanity check all our data, but a surprising number of people don't. It's not life threatening, but expensive!

[1] It's for the UK packaging waste regulations and packaging taxes. For a case of paper coffee cups we report on the weight and materials of every component such as the cardboard outer box, labels, parcel tape, inner sleeve bags, paper in the cups and the plastic lining in the cups.