RE: Usability poll: Picking timezones

["Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com>]

Well, I knew if they were both positive, you'd subtract. I was thinking that you needed to add the absolute value of both numbers to get the difference. I reasoned it out based on Lauren's account of what actually happened vs. what she expected.


________________________________________
From: Fred Ridder [mailto:docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 5:10 PM
To: Downing, David; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Usability poll: Picking timezones

 
David Downing wrote:
 
> Sounds like your MATH was fine. You added 1 to -8 and got -7. It sounds
> like it was more a matter of misunderstanding what the numbers
> signified. The negative numbers indicate a time to one side of GMT and
> the positive numbers indicate a time to the other side of GMT, so that
> in this case you had to ADD 1 to 8 to get 9 hours later.
 
Sorry but your analysis is simply wrong. When you are comparing two
time zones you are concerned with the difference between them, so
the correct operation is *subtraction*, not addition. The time difference
between UCT+8 and UCT+9 is 1 hour, not 17. The difference between
UCT+1 and UCT-8 is either 1-(-8) = 9 or (-8)-1 = (-9), depending on your
point of reference. By ignoring the negative sign and adding, you  
actually performed the correct operation, but for an erroneous reason.
 
-Fred Ridder
 
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