Calculating Constant Speed, the Dummy Approach

Formula for calculating average speed

As the Antisocial Network researchers wander the internet combing through the output of money-hungry freelance writers, time and time again they find their way back to eHow.com. The reasons are simple: first, eHow.com is one of the few remaining content farms (Associated Content, Helium, Lunch, and the rest have all gone to the great website graveyard in the sky). Second, a combination of strict formatting rules and clueless "content editors" lends itself to further stupidification of the internet. One need look no further that Athena Hessong and her post "How to Calculate Constant Speed"¹ to find an example of both.

In case you didn't know, constant speed is the same as average speed, and the calculation is dirt simple: constant speed is distance divided by time. As Hessong points out (probably accidentally),

"...speed differs from velocity because... velocity takes into account direction..."

Well, actually, in hopes of raising her word count, Hessong sticks in a couple of extra words and just about rendered the sentence useless:

"Constant speed differs from velocity because speed uses total distance traveled whereas velocity takes into account direction."

We said "useless" because both speed and velocity "[use] total distance traveled"... but let's see how Athena's instructions work. Here's what she says, bearing in mind that DMS requires a minimum of three steps and that each step begin with something called an "action verb." Perhaps that's why Athena's instructions boil down to Divide the distance traveled over the time to find the constant speed. Divide the distance traveled over the time to find the constant speed... Determine the constant speed in miles per hour by multiplying miles per minute by 60... Yes, she really did use the same sentence for steps one and two! Of course, someone with a brain -- and that apparently leaves out both this History BA and the content editor -- would have said:

Measure the distance traveled Record the elapsed time Divide distance by time. But no, that's not what Hessong says... and that bit of rampant stupidity is all our researcher needed to flag this rubbish as a more than worthy candidate for the Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was ehow.com/how_6207363_calculate-constant-speed.html

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