Security News > 2021 > February > The massive coronavirus IT blunder with a funny side
Unlike a cube, you don't end up as wide as you are tall, you're not as deep as you are wide, and your legs are a totally different shape and size to your torso, so presumably cubing your height in the BMI formula would be little better than squaring it, tending to overestimate your volume rather than to underestimate it.
It's still not obvious why BMI divides by the square of your height, given that you aren't flat, either - unlike a square, which does have a width and a height, yet has a depth of zero and therefore no volume at all.
Modern BMI alternatives suggest using your height raised to the power 2.5, thus slotting in somewhere beween squaring and cubing, in order to maintain the simplicity of the calculation, given that height and body mass are easy to measure with basic equipment.
Here's the thing: Liam Thorp's BMI was computed as 28,000, which was above the threshold needed to qualify him for early vaccination.
Local current limit = 40 local largest likely bmi = 200 local huge fudge factor = 12 local bmi = compute BMI(patientrecord) if bmi >= then ask for someone informed to check(patientrecord) log anomaly(patientrecord,"WEIRD BMI") elseif bmi >= current limit then send sms(patientrecord,invitation text) end.
So Liam's height was as improbable when it was entered as his computed BMI was when the vaccination scheduling system sent him his appointment.