Re: Please welcome . . .

Quoting Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>:

> On Sat, 13 Dec 2003, Ray Brown wrote:
>
> > > Strictly speaking, there is no "first" (and
> > > Heaven preserve us from "zeroth"!); it's his ONLY
> > > birthday.
> >
> > I know.
> >
> > Too late for preservation from 'zeroth'; it's been around
> > for decades.  You can't be a computer scientist or you'd
> > have got(ten) used to it yonks ago.
>
> I'd learnt the word well before I knew what a computer was; the word comes
> in useful when you're trying to beat someone who's claimed to be first (or
> similar). I've never heard of `minus oneth', though; it seems that becomes
> unreasonable or too complicated for the agegroup in question :)
Don't be too sure; I recall an episode from my elementary school days when
some girl in a such situation did claim to be the 'minus oneth'. Some of
slower thinkers started with "minus twoth", "minus threeth", etc before I
killed the exercise by claiming to be "minus infinitith".

I've also heard "minus oneth" etc in the context of the binary digits right of
the binary point.


                                                               Andreas

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