History Main / MisplacedADecimalPoint

* There's an urban legend that spinach is said to have a high iron content because once upon a time, someone misplaced the decimal point, and the figures on modern nutrition labels are because [[IdiotPlot every single person in every nutritional agency in the world since is just making computations based on that figure, not doing tests of any kind]]. This is, of course, [[http://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/Sutton_Spinach_Iron_and_Popeye_March_2010.pdf false]].

* In Creator/JamesBelushi vehicle ''Film/MadeMen'', Belushi plays Bill Menucci, a ConMan who stole twelve million dollars from the mob he worked for ''just'' before he [[TheStoolPigeon became a witness for the Feds]] and was placed in witness protection. During the film his old mob, a group of local criminals, and [[DirtyCop the crooked]] [[CorruptHick local sheriff]] who's secretly having an affair with Bill's wife Debra all come after him for revenge, the money, or both. When the sheriff catches up with Bill and Debra he's especially pissed, because he and Debra were planning to steal the money from Bill, except Debra told him Bill had only taken $120,000. Bill finds that ''hilarious'' and teases Debra about leaving out zeroes and misplacing decimal places... [[MoodWhiplash right up until the sheriff abruptly shoots her in the head]]. That kind of sucks the humor right out of the situation.

** In ''Film/TheMuppetMovie'', Kermit tries to buy a car at a [[HonestJohnsDealership rather disreputable dealership]], but can't afford any of them, until Sweetums swats a fly which creates a decimal point in a price tag; the dealer finds himself selling a $1195 car for $11.95, after paying a $12 trade-in on the Muppets' [[TheAllegedCar old lemon]].

* In "Homo Sol", a short story by Creator/IsaacAsimov, an alien scientist mentions an occasion when one of his students thought he'd disproved a longstanding theorem. It turned out he'd misplaced a decimal point ''in an exponent'', meaning his result was 10000000000 times too large.

* Played with in ''Series/RedDwarf: [[SwirlyEnergyThingy White Hole]]'', Holly's IQ has been significantly increased (to 12000) in exchange for [[ExplosiveOverclocking exponentially reducing her lifespan]]. When looking at her new lifespan, the screen displays 345 before she realizes "The decimal point, where's the decimal point?" She then discovers that she has 3.41 minutes left to live.

** This can happen nowadays as well if you use the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_notation scientific notation]] and calculate the exponent separately. for example 7*10^5 times 3*10^7 can be simplified to 7*3*10^(5+7) or 21*10^12 adjusting the mantissa yields 2.1*10^13; forgetting to increment the exponent while adjusting will lead to the trope.

--> Amy: That Americans can't handle the metric system?[[/folder]]

--> Sheldon: The table. It's in square meters. I read it as square centimeters. Do you know what that means?

[[/folder]]

->'''Bruce Banner:''' Uh, so I guess I must have dropped a decimal point somewhere, Mr. Stark

If a work of fiction has a character who's good or supposedly good at mathematics, he or she will inevitably screw something up somewhere down the line. When this happens, the project the group is working on comes crashing down, sometimes literally, and the mathematician will make a gesture of embarrassment and say, "I must have misplaced a decimal point."

* In Creator/JamesBelushi vehicle ''Film/MadeMen'', Belushi plays Bill Menucci, a ConMan who stole twelve million dollars from the mob he worked for ''just'' before he [[TheStoolPigeon became a witness for the Feds]] and was placed in witness protection. During the film his old mob, a group of local criminals, and [[DirtyCop the crooked]] [[CorruptHick local sheriff]] who's [[YourCheatingHeart secretly having an affair with Bill's wife Debra]] all come after him for revenge, the money, or both. When the sheriff catches up with Bill and Debra he's especially pissed, because he and Debra were planning to steal the money from Bill, except Debra told him Bill had only taken $120,000. Bill finds that ''hilarious'' and teases Debra about leaving out zeroes and misplacing decimal places... [[MoodWhiplash right up until the sheriff abruptly shoots her in the head]]. That kind of sucks the humor right out of the situation.

* Played with in ''Series/RedDwarf: [[SwirlyEnergyThingy White Hole]]'', Holy's IQ has been significantly increased (to 12000) in exchange for [[ExplosiveOverclocking exponentially reducing her lifespan]]. When looking at her new lifespan, the screen displays 345 before she realizes "The decimal point, where's the decimal point?" She then discovers that she has 3.41 minutes left to live.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Sing}}'', the prize for the talent show was intended to be $1000 (comprised mostly of various junk stuffed in a chest), but due to some antics with a GlassEye, the secretary in charge of writing the ads ends up typing $100000, which attracts far more performers than usual and causes various other problems.

* It seems the people at Verizon have this problem. [[http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html Misplacing the decimal can be a real problem when you're talking about money.]]

** This can happen nowadays as well if you use the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_notation scientific notation]] and calculate the exponent separately. for example 7*10^5 times 3*10^7 can be simplified to 7*3*10^(5+7) or 21*10^12 adjusting the mantissa yields 2.1*10^13 forgetting to increment the exponent while adjusting will lead to the trope.

* In ''Discworld/UnseenAcademicals'' , the Bursar of Unseen University is said to regard the decimal point as a nuisance. Inevitably, this leads to Ponder Stibbons taking over his responsibilities. Although being utterly mad may have more to do with it (not that that stopped him before) as he had previously been shown to be very mathematically adept.
** As of ''Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld'', the Bursar is now ''too'' mathematically adept to bother with decimal points, or real numbers. "Of course, he was a natural mathematician, and one thing a natural mathematician wants is to get away from actual damn sums as quickly as possible and slide into those bright sunny uplands where everything is explained by letters in a foreign alphabet".

* Some Carl's Jr./Hardees ads have the announcer say that a sandwich costs $299, before he corrects it to $2.99.

* Bentley sometimes steers you directly into security in ''Franchise/SlyCooper'' because of this or CarryTheOne. As a rule, [[IfMyCalculationsAreCorrect if he says his calculations are correct]], [[TemptingFate he's wrong]].

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* At the end of ''ComicBook/SupermanRedSon'' [[spoiler:Luthor's plan to destroy Superman and TakeOverTheWorld seems to have succeeded without a hitch...only for it to be revealed that Superman is still alive due to Luthor having misplaced a decimal point when he calculated Supes' density. However, due to Luthor having made Superman see the error of his ways as well as the world being a better place under Luthor's rule, he decides to let Luthor think he won and live the rest of his days in anonymity.]]

[[folder: Film: Live-Action ]]

[[folder: Film: Animated]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

** Another episode featuring another hologram named [[DrillSergeantNasty Queeg]][[spoiler:actually Holly pulling a prank on the crew]] insults Holly's IQ in this manner.
---> '''Queeg''': It has a six in it, but it's not six thousand.
---> '''Lister''': Well what is it?
---> '''Queeg''': [[DeadpanSnarker Six.]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* In one of the ''HaroldShea'' stories by Creator/LSpragueDeCamp and Fletcher Pratt, where magic has a mathematical basis, one of the characters has to prove his magical skills by invoking a dragon. The guy accidentally shifts the decimal point two places to the right and summons 100 dragons. Luckily they're vegetarian.