The biggest I’ve seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
The biggest I’ve seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
I think square feet is popular because many things dealt with aren’t squares, but a square foot is generally small enough to be a good measure, while also large enough to not be an unreasonably large number. When square feet are too small we move to yards (meters), acres, hectares or miles.
A house or apartment isn’t usually square, so how would you apply feet (or meters) squared to it? While a property line might well be equally long on each edge, so you might see it in feet squared, but also that number looks A LOT smaller, so you’ll often see square feet or meters
I was briefly fascinated by ‘chains’ at school, in the system of rods, links and chains. The idea of chains was you go around the outside of an irregular area and the number of chains related to the area in acres. 1 acre to 10 square chains?