Re: CHAT: Measurements (was: Re: CHAT: browsers)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:
>
>>And American people.
>
> Yes, I meant "English-speaking people", forgetting that not everyone in the
> English speaking world follows the same tradition.
Ah ;)

> > And I thought Europe did either 1.000 or 1'000, I
>>see them often enough.
>
> Indeed, 1.000 is the way to go in France, at least in printed material. 1 000
> is good second :)) .
Is there any reason why you have . for thousands and , for decimal? Is
that just how it's always been? It seems odd that the English tradition
ha(d|s) it vice-versa.

>  (Australians do 1 000 unless the subject is
>>money, when 1,000 is more common.) (Except that seperations are rare
>>in
>>four-digit numbers, I imagine because these can be read as either
>>'three
>>thousand, four hundred', or 'thirty-four hundred', or because of their
>>similarity to years, or because a single number by itself might be
>>lost
>>when there's no signal (like other groups).)
>
> Or because we don't have a single word for "ten thousands" (which seems to me
> to be the definite explanation ;)) ). As for Asian cultures which do have a
> single word for "ten thousands" but still group figures in threes, that's due
> to the fact that they borrowed the Arabic figures from us without adapting them
> to their use.
I'm not sure what ten thousand has to do with this. I'm talking of
four-digit numbers i.e. 1000--9999. Having a single word for ten
thousand would make no difference as to whether they'res a space (comma,
apostrophe, dot) in these, would it?

>>Ah, thanks. Strangely enough, in Chemistry, we would only talk of an
>>atmosphere as being 101.2 kPa, and approximable as 100 kPa.
>
> Indeed, strange. I only ever used kPa for small pressures of a few kPa.
Well, kPa *are* theoretically the 'better' ones. But we have worked out
my Chem class was odd.

> France is an interesting case. Millibars were the norm in meteo broadcasts,
> until somebody decided that it was nicer to go to hectopascals, more SI ;)) .
> So for a decade every meteo broadcast was talking in hPa. But then having the
> presentator give exact pressure measurements in each sentence seemed to fall
> out of use, and the meteo broadcasts stopped using measurements of pressure at
> all (they just talked about "depressions" and "anticyclones").
? I take it that those are highs and lows? The numbers are never
mentioned by the weathermen, but when they're written, the legend
normally gives them as hPa.

> Lately, I've not
> been much in France, but for the little I've seen, there's a return of the
> actual pressure measurements, which are given again in millibars! (which sounds
> terribly old-fashioned to me, but for people younger than me is brand new ;)) )
Lol ;)

>>The Australian Style Guide recommends the use of thousands prefixes,
>>so it seems like someone decided it was better.
>
> Or rather that someone sanctioned an already common use into a rule. It is not
> the same thing.
Yeah, I said 'seems' (i.e. appears).

> > And committee is spelt
>>with a double m, a double t and a double e.
>
> Thanks! Although I've seen comity too. Does it have a different meaning?
I've never heard of it, but M.-W. has:
<http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=comity>.

Tristan.

Reply