Scientists in lab coats tell us that when we see someone make a mistake, we experience a specific kind of pain. It is the same kind of pain we would feel if we were making the mistake ourselves. In my experience, it feels kinda like frustration. A common human response to this feeling is to try to “help” the person making the mistake. It’s not so much that we want their existence to be more pleasant, we just don’t want to have to suffer vicariously over lessons we’ve already learned. I think this is a pretty common way for information to move around, especially information about how to do things.

My wife hates when I “help”. She comes from a very polite family. I come from a family that, in aggregate, thought inflicting physical pain was an acceptable and effective way to communicate. My peers behaved in much the same way, but replaced charlie horses and joint locks with sarcasm and insults. I try not to be like that, but I suppose she and I are calibrated to different norms. While I intend my “OMG NOOB LOL! u r doin it rong dumbass” to be a friendly and helpful tip, for some reason it makes her tense and unhappy. Women!

Over the years I noticed that advice delivered on the spot does no good. So I just sit there, writhing on the inside, and occasionally ask, “may I do that for you?” It is not really a good solution.

Fortunately, this blog has exactly one regular reader. She knows that if she stops reading, it will hurt my feelings and I will cry but I’ll cry on the inside and not even tell her for a couple of years and then spring it on her out of nowhere. And so, I am going to talk about effective Googling.

So what’s to know? You type in some words, you get back some web pages. Easy-peasy!

Actually, went you submit a query to Google, using it to find web pages is the last thing Google tries. First, Google checks to see if your query can be interpreted as a number of other things. This page explains all the cool things Google can do. I want to talk about two specific features: calculation and unit conversion.

Lets say I have eaten five cupcakes, and I want to know how long it will take me to run off the calories. (A situation so implausible, I can’t imagine how it popped into my head.) I’m in my web browser already, so I hit ctrl-T to get a new tab, ctrl-K to focus on the Google search widget of my browser, and I type:

(5 * 88 calories) / 500 calories per hour =

…and hit enter. (The examples provided by Google all have a trailing ‘=’, but I have not found a case where omitting it changes the result. I’ve omitted it in some examples.) Google replies with:

(5 * 88 calories) / (500 (calories per hour)) = 52.8 minutes

Having my answer, I can hit ctrl-W, closing the Google tab and revealing whatever tab I was looking at before I hit ctrl-T. If you are in the middle of typing a gmail and need to make a calculation, you can do so without even having to reach for the mouse, and jump right back to your composition without having to find it in your doubtlessly cluttered tab bar.

Here’s another practical example. Lets say I want to know how long it will take me to install a new floor. It takes me about 10 minutes to do each m^2. My room is 5.5m by 6.5m.

5.5m * 6.5m * (10 minutes per m^2) =

Answer:

(5.5 m) * (6.5 m) * (10 (minutes per (m^2))) = 5.95833333 hours

Why bother specifying all those units? Google has excellent support for unit of measures, and this can serve as a verification that the correct calculation was requested. For example, lets say I was not paying attention, and I divided instead of multiplied:

5.5m * 6.5m / (10 minutes per m^2) =

Google tells me the answer is:

((5.5 m) * 6.5 m) / (10 (minutes per (m^2))) = 0.0595833333 m^4 / s

What the heck is a hypercubic metre per second? If the units don’t make sense, the calculation doesn’t make sense.

Google also knows about world currencies. So let’s use it to figure out how long it will take to save up for a new floor. The flooring costs $4.50 USD per square foot, and we are saving $50 CDN per week:

((5.5 m * 6.5m) * (4.5 USD per ft^2) / (50 Canadian dollars per week) in months

Answer:

(((5.5 m) * (6.5 m)) * (4.5 (U.S. dollars per (ft^2)))) / (50 (Canadian dollars per week)) = 9.72608511 months

Notice that I have used both metric and US measurements. The last example also introduces a new operator, ‘in’. It tells Google what unit of measure we want the result expressed in. The ‘in’ operator can be used without any calculations to simply convert a known quantity to another unit of measure. Examples:

1tbsp in ml

3 cups in litres

Google understands that there are at least two different units of measure called an ounce (for volume and mass) and can usually figure out which you mean if it is involved in a conversion. But to be safe, you should probably tell it when you are using fluid ounces.

8fl oz in ml

8 oz in g

Be aware that ‘in’ is both an operator and a unit of measure:

5ft 11in in m

Here is an exercise. Without touching the mouse, find out how long it will take me to eat 100 attoparsecs of spaghetti if I eat at a rate of 50 furlong per fortnight.