Talk:2946: 1.2 Kilofives

Challenge: Come up with a way like this to say the comic number #2946.

Challenge: Come up with a way like this to say the comic number #2946. Barmar (talk) 03:00, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

How about 4.91 hectosixes? 172.69.33.190 04:19, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

A kibitwo, four decascore, four score and eighteen. Two octooctotwentythrees and two. A gross-score, three score and 6. Jordan Brown (talk) 05:00, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

A semidozen tetrahectaenneacontahena. Xkcd machine guy (talk) 08:25, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

A decapentagross minus a semiennea. Xkcd machine guy (talk) 10:10, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly, four score and seven is exactly how you say 87 in French (quatre-vingt sept) and Basque (laurogeita zazpi). Both count on base 20. 172.70.90.138 05:16, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Comic discussion

Fun fact: libqalculate and the "Qalculate"/"qalc" programs can just deal with the title text:

   qalc "50milli score"
   50 × (10^−3) × score = 1

But it fails on the main part, the best that works is:

   qalc "1.2kilo 5"
   1.2 × 10³ × 5 = 6000

"five" gets interpreted as Euler's number × imaginary unit × unknown "f" × unknown "v". On my old laptop, I must have some other configuration or maybe an old version, because there it gets interpreted as 0×i×e=0, so you can enter "five plus five" and get 0. Maybe another challenge would be to get arbitrary misleading results out from equations like this. Fabian42 (talk) 05:59, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps East Hills NY, but their "Welcome" boards don't mention population, https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@40.7805262,-73.632634,3a,15y,25.75h,92.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sf5guvv2tETuyn0f_lSFh7A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&coh=205409&entry=ttu so this might just be a random name that R. came up withZeimusu (talk) 07:40, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

In the comic *fives* does not stand for the number five alone, but for five people. So using it with a prefix is more valid. Sebastian --172.68.110.4 10:15, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Five kilopeople would be valid.

172.70.91.63 10:34, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it would have made more sense to say "half a kilodozen". --141.101.69.45 11:54, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

It's just slightly off a gross of ultimate answers. 172.70.162.186 16:30, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I wonder why Randall chose to make Cueball the character saying that and not Black Hat/classhole. Turquoise Hat (talk) 15:35, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Live long enough to become the villain.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 17:14, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I realized that kilofives can be abbreviated as **k5**, as in "the population is 1.2 k5". Or if you're a roman, as **D**. 172.71.22.92 16:30, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't CIↃ have been rendered as <I>? ProphetZarquon (talk) 17:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I like it. I'm gonna start using this technique more. P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 20:04, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

The weird thing is, this wasn't a weird way to say a number, it was just an old way to say it. See Psalm 90:10 in the King James Bible more examples. 172.70.162.17 20:51, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Y2K isn't really a nonce, it's rather common to shorten e.g. "123 thousand" to 123K or 123k. From my 00's online gaming days, I even remember kk, kkk and so on having been used to refer to millions, billions and progressively higher powers of 1000 respectively, but that might've been more niche. 172.70.242.38 22:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)