Scientific Notation for Numbers?

[pozz]

For fun, can the forum software support scientific notation? It could be an option in user preferences where instead of 328 views, replies or likes, you're shown 3.28 x 10^2.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Agreed x 10^-8.

 

[q3cpma]

The programmer in me prefers 3.28e2, but good idea.

 

[amirm]

What? Here I thought you were going to complain about scientific notation in Klippel graphs! I hate them.

 

[MrPeabody]

The preferred method for indicating the location of the radix point in a number is to use a very long string of zeros. The more zeros a number has, the more significant it is, digit-wise.

 

[Blumlein 88]

The preferred method for indicating the location of the radix point in a number is to use a very long string of zeros. The more zeros a number has, the more significant it is, digit-wise.

Does that mean we have to parse out significant vs insignificant postings????

 

[richard12511]

Question: At what size (both huge and tiny) does a number become more easily understandable in scientific notation? I'm pondering this question for myself. I bet it's different for different people.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Question: At what size (both huge and tiny) does a number become more easily understandable in scientific notation? I'm pondering this question for myself. I bet it's different for different people.

I like it for seeing how many significant digits there are which is often 3 or 4 and the ability to scale up or down with other numbers easily.

 

[kcc]

For fun, can the forum software support scientific notation? It could be an option in user preferences where instead of 328 views, replies or likes, you're shown 3.28 x 10^2.

How about 101001000?

 

[pozz]

How about 101001000?

Sure. "Binary mode."

 

[pjug]

Lets be pretentious like the NFL, go Roman.

 

[scott wurcer]

Lets be pretentious like the NFL, go Roman.

I took two years of Latin in high school so I don't mind, but yes I don't get the continuance of this. They were scheduled to end it but went on.

 

[rdenney]

Brings to minds story: talking to a student, who had performed a calculation based on data with no better than two significant figures, and then gave an intermediate calculation to 9 significant figures—the full width of the calculator display, dutifully (and slowly, and confusingly) written down. I said, what does this mean?

He said, “We learned that intermediate calculations could use more significant figures.” My response, “okay, three. Maybe even four. But not nine.”

It wasn’t funny then, either.

But I am amused by the notation on the Klippel axes. These are labels of grid lines—exact numbers. Significant figures are not relevant. 10, 100, 10^3, 10^4 would be sufficient. I can understand Amir’s frustration.

Rick “calculator disease” Denney

 

[scott wurcer]

Brings to minds story: talking to a student, who had performed a calculation based on data with no better than two significant figures, and then gave an intermediate calculation to 9 significant figures—the full width of the calculator display, dutifully (and slowly, and confusingly) written down. I said, what does this mean?

For a while National put 9 digit numbers on their typical performance graphs.

 

[Wes]

what about engineering notation? groups of three

 

[Blumlein 88]

what about engineering notation? groups of three

Now that you mention it, that is actually what I end up using more often than not.

 

[ZolaIII]

01001110 01001111 00100001

 

[Tks]

Question: At what size (both huge and tiny) does a number become more easily understandable in scientific notation? I'm pondering this question for myself. I bet it's different for different people.

Personally, anywhere around 1 billion, to 10 million. After that, number, it becomes ridiculous. As for the low end, anything after three or four zero's after the decimal point, it becomes annoying (mostly because there's no comma to seperate the numbers cleanly).

 

[Balle Clorin]

For fun, can the forum software support scientific notation? It could be an option in user preferences where instead of 328 views, replies or likes, you're shown 3.28 x 10^2.

Are you joking?? Why on earth do yo want to see 3.28 x 10^2 instead of 328?
or maybe you are too used to the HP 41c calculator using 1 ENTER 2 ENTER + =2 instead of 1+1=2

 

[Katji]

What we actually need is a decent BBCode package to handle superscript and subscript. It seems this is the default, peculiar not including that.