Stuart Varney's trivia question today, as near as I can remember: How many lines of latitude does the earth have?
A. 90
B. 180
C. 270
D. 360
What is your answer if you want to get credit for a correct response?
What is the real correct answer?
For credit, B
For real, infinity
Yep. But even 180 is incorrect in terms of whole numbers of degrees, which is what I think the questioner meant.. It leaves out the equator at 0 (that old programmer's counting nemesis) degrees and ignores the fact that the poles are points only, not lines.
Pity poor school children who have to routinely decide between what they know is right and what a questioner thinks is right.
So the correct answer to the number of lines of latitude expressed as a whole number is,,,,,,,,179?
The poles aren't lines, and 0 is a whole number or integer.
so 89+89+1
even if you consider the 90 degree points as lines that still makes 181 so none of the answers are correct no matter how the question is considered. However, how it's asked is easy as Norman stated: infinity.
Spot on. Even if the question asked for the number of whole number of degrees of latitude, ignoring "lines", there is no correct choice given. That answer would be 181 including the equator, zero degrees.
Trivia for sure, anal not, but indicative of why counting is one of the hardest things for folks to get right anybody's world.
So the correct answer to the number of lines of latitude expressed as a whole number is,,,,,,,,179?
This still isn't right. The number of lines of latitude is infinite. You can't express that as whole number. The "right" question would be something like how many whole number lines of latitude are there when expressed in degrees.
