Editing 2946: 1.2 Kilofives

{{comic
| number    = 2946
| date      = June 14, 2024
| title     = 1.2 Kilofives
| image     = 1 2 kilofives 2x.png
| imagesize = 256x342px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = 'Oh yeah? Give me 50 milliscore reasons why I should stop.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by 83.333... millidozen BOTS, Y2K reference added by ZC - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Abraham Lincoln's {{w|Gettysburg Address}} features the phrase "four {{wiktionary|score#Noun|score}} and seven"‍ to refer to 87: a "score" is a group of 20, which literally translates as "four-twenties [and] seven". This is because English used to count by twenties (and some modern languages, including French still do). However, this practice has died off and most English speakers nowadays would not use "score" in such a manner. Inspired by this, [[Cueball]] (possibly representing [[Randall]]) decides to use unusual prefixes to state the population of a town.

{{w|Metric prefix}}es can be added to a unit to scale up or down its magnitude. For example, "{{w|kilo-}}" means "multiply by 1000", so a {{w|kilometer}} is as long as 1,000 {{w|meter}}s. These prefixes are added to {{w|List of metric units|various metric units}} but, due to their usefulness, have been adopted and added to other, non-metric units, such as "kilocubic feet per second" (for the flow rate of a liquid, much to Randall's chagrin when researching for his book "XKCD What-If"), "megadeath" (how many millions killed in an estimated nuclear blast), or the "{{w|Helen (unit)|millihelen}}" (the amount of feminine beauty needed to launch a ship). Most potentially confusing might be "kilo-/mega-/giga-/terabyte",  which has [[394|competing definitions]]. However, they're not ordinarily added before number words to change their magnitude.

Taking "kilofive" to be a unit meaning 5,000, the population of East Hills, 6,000, can therefore be expressed as 1.2 kilofives. But phrasing a number this way requires the listener to make excess calculations to understand it, so [[White Hat]] would probably get confused or annoyed.

It is somewhat common for metric prefixes to go ''after'' numbers in abbreviations. Well-known examples are "{{w|Y2K}}" for "year 2000", and "{{w|4K resolution}}" for "4,000 [pixels]". The number 5,000 may be abbreviated as "{{w|5K}}" in "{{w|5K resolution}}". However, the 'postfix' (suffix) may be intended to modify the implied but unstated unit, where there is an obvious one, or stand for the unit itself in such cases as the word "kilometer" (often abbreviated to /ˈkeɪ/(s), in common use, in phrases such as "{{w|5K run}}") or "{{wiktionary|kilopixel|kilo''pixel''}}" (in this case referencing the horizontal resolution, as in 5120 × 2880 pixels, rather than prior usages such as the 1080 ''horizontal lines'' in the standard known as {{w|1080p}}, or the total ''area'' pixel count in 'megapixel'/'gigapixel' image sensors), thus making it directly stand for a prefixed unit itself, as an adjunct to the the standard common shortening of "kilos" for, usually, "kilograms". Saying "1.2 5K" could be even more awkward, liable to be misunderstood as "1.25k" (1,250) instead of the value of 6000.

In the title text, Cueball has apparently annoyed White Hat with his confusing expressions of numbers, but he doubles down, now directly including the word "score". He is riffing on the common expression, "give me one reason why..." but instead of simply asking for one reason, he asks for 50 milliscore reasons, or 50 &times; 1&frasl;1000 &times; 20, which is equal to 1.

The comic might refer to the village of {{w|East Hills, New York}}. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 7,284, or around 1.2 kilosixes.

==Trivia==
In Roman numerals, {{w|Roman_numerals#Large_numbers|symbols can be added to numerals}} to denote orders of magnitude. In this system, 1,000 might be written as "CIↃ". This rough pattern of marks, as typically chisled or impressed into wax by a stylus, would later be refined and expressed in the not dissimilar shape of the "M" as most often seen these days to represent the thousands value in dates/etc. Alternately "I" (nominally '1') could be given a bar above it, as would any other such numerals involve in that expression, to indicate the value being denoted being of the higher order.

For a while, {{w|Long hundred| a hundred actually referred to 120}}.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Cueball, with his palm raised, is talking to White Hat. There is a sign on the ground in the background.]
:Cueball: It's a pretty small town—the population is just 1.2 kilofives.
:[The sign reads:]
:<small>Welcome to</small>
:East Hills
:<small>Pop.</small> 6,000

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I don't know why Abraham Lincoln should be the only one who gets to come up with weird ways to say normal numbers. 

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Language]]