Talk:2319: Large Number Formats

Scientist avoiding rounding

Would love an explanation of the scientist avoiding rounding one. Would make sense to me with 2.525997..., but as 2.5997... I'm at a loss! 198.41.238.106 (talk) 22:19, 12 June 2020 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Truncating the number just before a digit less than 5 so that the final digit is not rounded up. (I do this all the time, and, I am a scientist.) 108.162.216.172 (talk) 00:48, 13 June 2020‎ (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

(The above was posted (anonymously?) seconds before I could get mine in, so here it is in the original format.)

This is probably completely irrelevant but it seems Randall made a small typo when trying to show a "Scientest trying to avoid rounding up." I assume it should be 2.525997*10^13. It seems he left out a 5 and a 2 and I say such because whether he forgot the 52 or 25 is up for debate.

Relevant screenshot: [[1]]

Also, if I'm just being completely daft and am missing something completely, please feel free to criticize me harshly and I'll go back to my little hideyhole. 108.162.237.24 22:21, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

In reality, a scientist would probably say 6.416*10^13 cm. (Although possible counterpoint, this comic is really about the number 25,259,974,097,204, not the distance 25,259,974,097,204 inches.) 172.69.33.207 22:47, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Centimetres are not an SI unit. it would be 6.416*10^11 m 172.68.255.14 01:56, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I believe the "2.5997" was intentional, or at least I thought it was when reading it. At first I thought it was a typo, but Randall calls that number "Scientist trying to avoid rounding up" which makes me think Randall intentionally made that "mistake" as if the scientist had accidentally forgotten the first two digits (25) and used the remainder of the number (259974...), rounding it to "2.5997x10^13" Kirypto (talk) 23:03, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Randall fixed it! Gvanrossum (talk) 05:43, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Looks like that was just a typo, Randall replaced it with a new version. Natg19 (talk) 02:55, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

As a (not so?) old British person, I approve. Let the Trillions come around later, when it's worth increasing the prefix to "level 3". Don't waste them on the more petty numbers. 162.158.155.122 23:13, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

"Engineering" notation omitted?

I find it somewhat strange that Randall doesn't offer 25e12 or any of those variants (25.259...*10^12). I feel like a lot of "non-normal" people would map billion to E12 instead of requiring a single digit to the left of the decimal point. shrug JohnHawkinson (talk) 23:09, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Honestly I thought "engineering" notation was a myth invented by HP's calculator division. But I'm personally offended that the programmers' notation 25_259_... was omitted. Maybe Randall still uses Python 2. :-) Gvanrossum (talk) 05:47, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Actual scientist:

"What's an inch?" 162.158.62.119 23:18, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

The imaginary nano-scale multiple of the speed of light times Planck's constant. Which, dimensionally, would seem to be kg.m³/s²? 162.158.154.73 00:15, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

As an article pointed out to me the other day that seemed obvious after it was said it's a non tarrif trade barrier used as American protectionism that doesn't get tarrifed back

Can someone explain the set theory notation?

You can use only sets to construct the natural numbers, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_number#Constructions_based_on_set_theory

Title Text 10^13.4024

It seems nobody has pointed out that the power of 10 in the title text is really just the log(x) of the number, which is in fact very common in scientific contexts -> log(25,259,974,097,204) = 13.4024 Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 02:31, 13 June 2020 (UTC)