this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
396 points (95.2% liked)

World News

38977 readers
2298 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 13esq@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Not really. Most people aren't familiar with scientific or engineering notation. Writing £1,000,000, one million pounds or £1Million is a lot clearer than writing £1×10^6.

My cars odometer says 91,584, not 91.584×10^3

[–] Tabula_stercore@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Your examples are with small enough numbers that indeed it can also be written out. Now if you please, write out 7.45•10^16

[–] 13esq@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

It's not about the size of the number, it's about presenting information in a way that the average reader can understand. The best way to do that is to present it in the way that they're accustomed to and I don't think I've ever seen scientific notation used to refer to a sum of money.

It's great that you and I understand scientific notation, but it's worthlesss when you're trying to get the average person to understand what you're writing if they don't know it themselves.

To make myself clear, I'm not saying that scientific notation isn't useful, I'm just saying that most people don't understand it.

For extra credit, 74,500,000,000,000,000 aka seventy four quintillion, five hundred quadrillion.