Misplaced decimal point means Oregon county's 911 system could be out millions

[TexasTowelie]

2. So if I ever become a cashier at the dollar store,

you are the person that I should charge $100 instead? (I'm joking, of course). Placing the decimal point in the proper position is extremely important.

Don't feel bad though, when I worked at the insurance department we had an exhibit that we were about to publish the aggregate data for release. The data in the exhibit was supposed to be rounded to the nearest thousand dollars. The exhibit went through the chief actuary and my supervisor's hands before they asked me to check and I noticed that they were going to report the amount of premiums in the state of Texas as $9 trillion (about equal to the U.S. GDP) instead of $9 billion. Big oops! The exhibit didn't get published until four months later as they had to get the programmer to review the data and programming. Despite the fact that each of us had degrees in mathematics, it figures that the person at the bottom of the totem pole is the person that finds the errors and keeps the management from looking like fools.