this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
467 points (97.8% liked)

Science Memes

10923 readers
1958 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21049862

The only numbers I will ever spell are one and zero, and only when using them as a pronoun, or for emphasis, respectively.

Is there ever a reason to not to use symbols when dealing with numbers? Why would "fourteen whatevers" ever be preferable to "14 whatevers". It's just so much easier to read numbers as symbols, not spelled out.

(Caveat, not including multipliers, like "273 billion").

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'll allow billion, but personally my preference is using powers of 10 or unit prefixes.

Just I'm not gonna be mad about the newspaper writing 3.5 billion dollars.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Unless that number means something different from US$ 3.5e9.

If you are one of those people that think your country uses the other "billion", just don't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Touche, yeah, I'd totally be on board if everyone just uses $3.5*10⁹ or $3.5e9. Good luck getting it catch on outside eng/science circles though haha