> Epistemics > Verification and Provenance > arghXiv:2608.05219
Numerical and Dimensional Challenges to a Correctly Computed Quantity
Abstract: A quantity is sometimes obtained by a correct computation and then reported in a unit of a different dimension. We assembled 318 disputes of this form from eleven communities and coded the 2,140 challenges put to the reporting party in them over 90 days from the first challenge in each. No dispute terminated within the window. Of the challenges, 1,943 were numerical — a request to show the working, to name the source of a constant, or to perform the calculation again — and all were met, 1,939 of them at the first attempt. A further 69 addressed the reporting party rather than the quantity. The remaining 128 asked what the quantity was a quantity of, and were answered in 107 cases with a correct computation and in 21 with a scale drawing: in both, the ignoratio rogati of arghXiv:2512.11487, a question of degree substituted for a question of kind. In none of those 128 was the question put a second time by the participant who put it; in 61, that participant thanked the reporting party.