Google Hertz

For all the talk I’ve heard over the years about how Google hires the brightest and best talent, that apparently doesn’t mean for all aspects of the business. Or maybe they’ve grown too big and have lowered their standards.

I got this email from them, a standard form email, so I’m sure thousands of people got the same email. Which also means it should have been reviewed by someone other than just the one person who typed it up. At least I assume that’s standard practice for most places – an official communication to customers shouldn’t be thought up and sent out by one person.

In reality, it’s not a big deal. I think whoever gets the email will understand what Google meant. But it’s not like it’s an ambiguous term – “frequency” has a specific meaning, especially to electrical engineers, but even non-engineers know that a higher frequency means something happens more often.

It’s not like “turn up the air conditioning” which can get a response of “wait, do you want it warmer or colder?” because “up” can apply to the temperature setting or the fan speed or they actually want the temperature to do down. But I don’t know how you could take the term “frequency” as anything but frequency.

image of an email from Google that misuses the term frequency

Their problem is that they mixed units. The numbers are in time but their description is in frequency, which is inverse time. So when they say “lowest frequency” it’s actually the highest frequency, but lowest time. And vice-versa.

Why they felt the need to use “frequency” instead of “time”, I’m not sure. They must have had guidance from the product team that told them to use “frequency”.

Rid yourself of a deceitful mouth And keep devious speech far from you.

Proverbs 4:24

Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Stumble Upon

This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:58 am and has been carefully placed in the Mishaps category.

Leave a Reply

Comment moderation: please do not submit your comment multiple times, as comments are not posted until I approve them. If your comment never appears, that probably means that I didn't like your comment (maybe off topic, maybe spam, maybe not family-friendly, etc.).