Trivia Testing with Math

How long a line can the average pencil draw?  According to my page-a-day calendar, a line that is 35 miles long.  Also, according to the same calendar entry, that same average pencil can write approximately 45,000 words.

Interesting trivia!  I decided to use this information to do a quick calculation of the average length of line needed per letter written, expecting it to be something in the 1/2 cm to 1 cm range.

I came up with an interesting result.

Here are the calculations I did:

1. I converted 35 miles to kilometres:   35 miles x 8/5 km/mile = 56 km.
2. I converted 56 km to metres:  56 km x 1000 m/km = 56,000 m
3. I converted 45,000 words to letters, based on the old typing standard of 5 letters per word:  45,000 words x 5 letters/word = 225,000 letters
4. I calculated how many metres per letter:  56,000m / 225,000 letters = 0.249 m/letter
5. I converted 0.249 m/letter to cm/letter:  0.249 m/letter x 100cm/m = 24.9 cm/letter; let's round that to 25 cm.

So that means that each letter uses a line 25 cm in length to draw it.  That, if we go back to imperial measurements (feet/yards/miles) is almost 10 inches.  10 inches or 25 centimetres - those are BIG letters!

Conclusion:  Either 35 miles is wrong, or 45,000 words is wrong, or my calculations are wrong.  I make mistakes when I do calculations.  So I redid the math - twice.  Still the same answer.  So at this point I'm saying one of those two pieces of trivia quoted is very wrong.

Another answer to "Why math?":    So we can confirm or contradict information we're given as fact!