[wdmmg-discuss] Number of digits for money amounts in dashboard etc

Fri Jun 11 18:18:36 UTC 2010

I don't think the number of significant figures shoud depend on the 
absolute magnitude. I would be happy with this:

 	4.89bn
 	489mn
 	48.9mn
 	4.89mn

...or this:

 	4.9bn
 	490mn
 	49mn
 	4.9mn

...but not with a mixture of the two.

 	Alistair

On Fri, 11 Jun 2010, Jonathan Gray wrote:

> +1. ;-)
>
> Agree that it would be nice to adopt roughly adopt the same kinds of
> numerical breakdowns a newspaper would use (3.4bn not 3.41 bn?) --
> with hover over for exact amount.
>
> J
>
> On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 6:46 PM, David Jones <david.jones at okfn.org> wrote:
>> Some of the money amounts displayed by the dashboard use 4 digits (EG "The
>> Environment: £4894mn").  None use decimal points.
>>
>> I think the display should use at most 3 digits.  And therefore a decimal
>> point should be used.
>>
>> So 4.89bn rather than 4894mn.
>>
>> I note I'm not alone in thinking some of this: See
>> http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/comments/dashboard/#comment-257
>>
>> In fact, I think 4.89bn is a bit too cluttered, and 4.9bn would be better.
>>  Besides, it's not like anyone believes more than the first digit or so,
>> right?
>>
>> So my rules for displaying an amount are:
>>
>> - Choose whichever of million or billion (or presumably thousand, trillian,
>> etc) makes the integer part, when rounded, 3 digits or fewer;
>> - if the integer part has 3 digits, just use that;
>> - otherwise (the integer part has 1 or 2 digits), add a decimal point and
>> one digit after the decimal point.
>>
>> So:
>>
>> 4.9bn
>> 489mn
>> 48.9mn
>> 4.9mn
>>
>> There is a corner case in the first part: 999,700,000 should be 1.0bn not
>> 1000mn (hence the "when rounded" in the above rules).
>>
>> The hover over balloon could easily display more detail if needed.
>>
>> What do other people think?
>>
>> drj
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>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
>
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