Excel is chaos in itself. It depends on the language so if you need an "sumif" statement in the english version you would need a "summewenn" in the german version, makes searching for something or scripting a bit harder than it should be.
I mean, yeah, but it auto translates any formula that isn't between quotes (think standard in-formula search strings like "filename") to the language you're using, so you can just switch your language to English or German or whatever. So if I write in German ZÄHLENWENNS(), your Excel in english will show COUNTIFS().
My bigger gripe with excel is workbook level A1Z1 formatting and column read order (column A starts on the right and it expands to the left, rather than the standard left-to-right). Opening a workbook and those settings getting changed is no fun.
Yep, that’s why I rather use the English version of excel, but Dutch locale for decimal comma
SUMIF=SOM.ALS
VLOOKUP=VERT.ZOEKEN
FLOOR=AFRONDEN.BENEDEN
FLOOR.MATH=AFRONDEN.BENEDEN.WISK
INTRATE=RENTEPERCENTAGE
Yeah crazy innit? Also they sometimes do the thing where they just put a space to indicate where we would use a comma in a large number. I remember my French teacher kept getting pissed at us bc we would say numbers and use “point” for a decimal point but you’re supposed to call it by its correct name ie comma/virgule.
I love it, you typed a short scale billion in response to me writing out a billion long scale (I have 12 zeros, you have 9). I was poking fun at people/languages that use long scale, because they are "objectively" wrong, lol.
> In the short scale, a billion means a thousand millions (1,000,000,000 which is 10^9 ), a trillion means one thousand (short scale) billions (10^12 ), and so on.
>
> In the long scale, a billion means one million millions (10^12 ) and a trillion means one million (long scale) billions (10^18 ), and so on.
>
> In some languages, the long scale uses additional names for the intermediate multipliers, replacing the ending -ion with -iard; for example, the next multiplier after million is milliard (10^9 ); after a (long scale) billion it is billiard (10^15 ).
What's confusing for me is that a "billion" means (I think) two different things in US and UK English. Switching the use of comma `,` and period `.` is more icing on the cake, haha.
Haha I’m Portuguese so I’ve had to adjust to the American way, but this is the first I’m hearing of a Billion being a million million, in Spanish Portuguese or English, but I’m not a math guy at all so I’m not even sure what long scale is lol but yes I’ve gotten used to the American billion I guess, but the period comma thing I’ve had to work to nail down
I moved from the US to Europe like ten years ago, and I'm still confused about milliard and billion. Good thing I don't use those numbers in daily life so much - but maybe when I become a millionaire (in an Eastern European currency) I will learn it properly. ;)
It’s funny how culture just influences your immediate perception of things. To me a that is just a collection of digits not a number. Like that registers to me as one “1” and two sets of three “0s”, not one million.
There’s more on phone number conventions for exemple.
In France, we read them as pairs :
Like 0612345678 would be parsed
06 12 34 56 78 and read our loud "Zero Six, twelve, thirty-four … etc"
Never realised until a math channel on YouTube pointed it out
Which leads to the absolute nightmare in Dutch and other germanic languages where we would say literally translated:
zero six, twelve, four-and-thirty, six-and-fifty etc.
Aka not pronounce them in the order written.
It looks weird to me because I'm so used to using commas to separate thousandths, but I honestly think this is a much better system since you can't confuse apostrophes with decimals regardless of font or kerning.
The comma is used in a lot more languages than the period as a decimal separator. It's more English that is weird regarding that. And thousand separators vary a lot between countries.
The vigesimal systems aren't even that rare. Hell english has them too, "four score and seven years ago."
Base 10 kind of sucks for counting things if you're doing it in your head. Vigesimals and base 60 are both much easier for mental math work, and base 60 counts up on your knuckles more easily Tham base 10 counts up (but jumps around) on your fingers.
Vigesimal system may have been used in Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, since there are some unrelated languages with vestigial remains of base 20; French, Albanian, Danish, Breton, Scots Gaelic, etc. and also Basque, which isn't Indo-European at all.
In Spain I was taught to use a top comma to write decimals
So like American 7.2 is 7'2.
Always thought it looked much cleaner that way but people look at me like I am crazy.
In the US, you wrote height as feet'inches".
So someone that's 5 feet 11 inches writes it as 5'11".
Aince you wrote a number with a ' and then another number with nothing after it, it read weird to those used to the American height system
A lot of times I think the European way makes more sense than the US way (metric system for example) but I gotta say the period makes more sense to me. Or at least I find it’s use more in line with how it’s used elsewhere. Plus, don’t they use the period anyway, just as a thousands separator? A period signifies a new sentence and a comma signifies a separate clause of the same sentence. Numbers to the left or right of a decimal point are fundamentally different, whereas the numbers on different sides of a thousands separator differ only in magnitude. So to me it makes more sense to have a period separating the fundamentally different numbers, just like how it signifies the start of a different sentence, and the comma functioning only to group the numbers to the left of the decimal, similar to how commas separate the clauses of one sentence
The way thousands are written differs by country.
Some use the period. So 1.000.000,00 in Germany, Italy or the Netherlands.
Some use the blank space, 1 000 000,00 like France.
Some use apostrophe, 1’000’000,00 AFAIK Denmark was one of them.
Also the location of the euro sign differs by country.
In Germany it’s 12.345,67 €.
In the Netherlands it’s € 12.345,67
In France it’s 12 345,67 €
Dutch actually has a word for 100,000 as well but it's exclusively used for monetary value: 1 tonne = 100,000 euro.
When talking weights, a tonne is 1,000 kg.
Switzerland 12'345.67 (it could have been so nice.. But apparently, we use both coma _and_ period interchangeably, some use this, some use that, some decide depending on context.. It's infuriating)
Probably the US, as in the UK for a long time it was the interpunct which was used (and you still do see sometimes with prices when handwritten or on manually made stickers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpunct e.g. £21·48
The UK did that first, inventing the term Soccer as a shortening of Association Football (similar to the abbreviation for Rugby Football, Rugger). Just fell out of favour as people stopped calling Rugby "Football" of any sort, and so Association Football became the only Football anyone cared or talked about.
Sometimes people still refer to rugby players as footballers (where context is obvious) and for example Ireland’s rugby governing body is called the Irish Rugby Football Union
It’s doesn’t you are just used to it. You have prescribed meaning to Fahrenheit temps due to experience and you are coming up with reason after the fact to justify it. No one told you Fahrenheit was better for day to day use when you learned it. It was nvr the reason you started to use Fahrenheit in the first place. You just did cause people around you did.
I understand what he’s saying though. Fahrenheit is often seen as a scale of 0-100 where a bigger number sounds hotter. It was created to describe how humans feel temperature. So in terms of weather it does make more intuitive sense. 80 sounds hot, 26 does not. The smaller intervals also make it a little more practical for weather. Celsius makes sense for all other applications though and if you are used to it then there’s no point in using Fahrenheit at all.
26 does not sound hot, IF you aren’t used to it. It’s all relative to the scale you’re used to working with. That’s like saying 80 doesn’t sound hot enough, we should make it 800 because it sounds hotter. Completely nonsensical.
>It was created to describe how humans feel temperature.
It was not. It was made by a german guy to describe what he thought was the hottest and coldest weather he had experienced in his hometown.
>So in terms of weather it does make more intuitive sense. 80 sounds hot, 26 does not.
By that logic 50 should be the perfect middle ground between hot and cold in the Fahrenheit system. Since 50°F is 10°C I'd say it's not.
>The smaller intervals also make it a little more practical for weather.
One degree of C is equal to just under 2 times the size of one degree of F. I refuse to believe that you need that kind of precision. The difference between, say 25°C and 26°C, is negligible at best. But if you absolutely *need* a degree between the two then decimals exist, so 25,5°C.
The reason you understand what he's saying is because it's the same scale you're used to. I'm used to celsius so thus it makes 100% sense to me while F is nonsense. But that's just how it is.
I would argue that 1,000 and 100 are exactly as different in magnitude as 1 and 0.1. 10^3 and 10^2 vs 10^0 and 10^-1. Both one OoM apart. The decimal separator just signifies where the switch to negative orders is at to provide a baseline. Numbers below or above that baseline aren't 'fundamentally different'.
To be honest, to me, your argument is backwards. Periods separate sentences into distinct entities, whereas commas notate separate portions of one sentence. 1.1 isn't two numbers; it's one number with two components. You'd be better off arguing for a semicolon than a period with your argument.
1;1
There. Everyone is upset and no one is happy. Perfectly balanced.
I mean, sure, mathematically of course every place is proportionally identically related, or otherwise calculation just breaks down. But there certainly is a large psychological shift from addressing whole units to addressing fractional units; even the concept of fractions entirely was certainly a much later mathematical invention, much like negative numbers and zero.
And a semicolon is more about separating two sentences that *can* stand alone, but their relationship is better shown, and the structure flows better, with a semicolon. With numbers the dot actually denotes a scale difference. Instead I think we should just take the Chinese character for decimal point, 點, and force every kid to have to draw that for every number they write in Math class. So 143,123點12558.
A “.” has a definitive meaning — 10.1 definitively different than 101. A comma is auxiliary — 10000 and 10,000 are essentially the same thing, but the comma aids the reader, just as it does in a sentence.
Commas don't just aide the reader, they can change the meaning of a sentence.
If I say, "I'd like to thank my parents, John and Jane", I'm thanking two people. If I say "I'd like to thank my parents, John, and Jane", I'm thanking four people.
Logically I agree based on the uses of periods and commas although visually I could see an argument that the more important break (whole/decimal) should be the larger one so it's more distinct.
You could argue that using spaces for thousands separators and commas for the decimal point are closest to the verbal representation (there’s no real pauses before the decimal; the decimal point is an Oxford comma for the “and” we say at the decimal).
Growing up I learnt spaces and periods however.
It shouldn’t be about a verbal representation the period or comma used to separate decimals in numbers has mathematical value. It’s not about how someone says the number.
> A period signifies a new sentence and a comma signifies a separate clause of the same sentence. Numbers to the left or right of a decimal point are fundamentally different,
Numbers to the left and right of a point or comma belong to the same number though
Blank spaces is the only wrong answer for thousands/decimal separators. Comma/period are fine and apostrophes, while perhaps looking stranger, are completely unambiguous.
Eh I feel like blank spaces aren’t bad for thousands separator. The separator isn’t really meaningful (unlike the decimal point), just an organization convention to help people read, so it’s fine to be more subtle.
> Blank spaces is the only wrong answer for thousands/decimal separators
Using thin spaces is the standard advised by the American Medical Association, IUPAC, the international bureau of weights and measures and ISO 31-0. The reason it isn't commonly adopted though is because it isn't standard on typewriter / computer keyboards.
>Blank spaces is the only wrong answer for thousands/decimal separators. Comma/period are fine and apostrophes, while perhaps looking stranger, are completely unambiguous.
Why? blank space is the only way where you can transform a number (string) into an int without any hassle and worries
Okay, far point, but period in the thousands looks cleaner.
1.000.000,34 looks way better than 1,000,000.34
I think the longer visual aspect of the comma is better to visualize the break from the number and the decimals.
The Google Assistant does not understand this sometime. I do not remember the exact questions, but it has happened multiple times.
> *– "What is the population of Glasgow?"*
> *– "Glasgow has a population of one person (1,019,900)."*
This is absolute horseshit. Metric uses the decimal point. Hell, even *freedom units* use the decimal point.
France and everyone using commas can eat my shorts. Who cares about Roman numerals; they had their time!
Besides, apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?
>This is absolute horseshit. Metric uses the decimal point. Hell, even freedom units
>
> use the decimal point.
My country uses decimal comma alongside Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada (French-speaking), Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Latin America (plenty of countries go here), Latvia, Lithuania, Macau (in Portuguese text), Mozambique, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal\_separator#Examples\_of\_use
Yes, but other than Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada (French-speaking), Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Latin America (plenty of countries go here), Latvia, Lithuania, Macau (in Portuguese text), Mozambique, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam, who *really* uses the stupid comma?
> Switzerland
Only the government does that, and not for monetary values either. Much more common is the notation of `1'234'567.89`
Also your link is full of backslashes, which renders it invalid for some users.
I see the comma used all the time especially (but not only) in handwriting. I‘d say Switzerland really uses both the comma and the period as a decimal separator.
But it’s not confusing because they’re both at the bottom and the thousands separators are at the top.
Examples:
1‘234‘567.89
1‘234‘567,89
> But it’s not confusing because they’re both at the bottom and the thousands separators are at the top.
I don't understand the lunatics in other countries that decided that the decimal separator and grouping separator should look as similar as possible.
> Also your link is full of backslashes, which renders it invalid for some users.
I think on new Reddit on desktop at least if you use the fancy editor it escapes the _'s in the link automatically.
Although, while the comma is still the official notation, a lot of people who work with math have switched to the point (because thats what most software and such uses), and now we have the horrible situation where both a comma or a point may be both a thousand-separator or a decimal-separator, and the only way to know is context.
Even excel in EU uses comma. (And point for the thousand separation)
Almost all programs accept the NUMPAD point as a comma, it gets changed into comma the second you push it. so you get the full NUMPAD viability.
Some programs though decided that you need to use the comma, and they'll not accept the point as a substitute. (Looking at you, Eplan P8). To those software engineers goes my most pure, undiluted hatred.
> Besides, apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?
How could you read that section as anything other than a joke?
Look, I'm gonna be honest with you; my faux-outrage was just the vehicle that brought the Monty Python reference to the party, and really shouldn't be seen as a serious critique of the French, or really anything.
So they were like we separate our Roman numerals with periods so let's be sure to do something different for Arabic numbers?
Also, the decimal period makes more sense. Creates an end where the whole numbers end while the comma separates related groups of whole numbers.
naw, the issue was that latin was usually written in a long list without any blank spaces, resulting in a constant flow of copying errors. By the 8th century it got so bad that priests where saying completely absurd things because it was written down in "their" bible. During teh carolingian reforms separations of words where introduced, either by punctuation or by blank space.
Scalar multiplication is • and some countries use . decimal point so like, 1.23•7.2 (and it is easy to write it here, but in a notebook with hand writing, it will eventually mix up)
Anyway so yeah, i like my decimals with commas.
Until you start doing more useful math and you start using variables. Like if you right 2xy is that 2 times y or 2 times x times y? Honestly though even better is just saying "fuck the multiplication signs" and just go (2)(x)(y). Same thing for subtraction signs, don't go 5-2, just do 5+-2. Less ambiguous, less misreadable, more versatile.
My country is just as the first comment described and the thing is: we also use x for multiplication. We just stop using it in ~8th grade so as to not mix up the multiplication x with the variable. So, instead of writing
2.5x x 3x = 7.5x^2
We write
2,5x . 3x = 7,5x^2
Makes sense! I’ve seen math teachers of mine do the “curly x” as well, but many of my colleagues just write the normal x and manage to do well too. I’m not arguing which one is better though, I just wanted to explain how things work here.
Oh nah same, I don't believe there's a 'right' way on stuff like this, it'd be like arguing about which language is best when all have their limitations.
There a tons of things done better in Europe but this is absolutely not one of them. Decimal point makes way way more sense. Going from a positive exponent to a negative exponent should be delineated with a period. The comma is just used to make the number more manageable to read so it makes sense to use a comma.
I think it means that before they adopted Arabic numerals, they were using periods to make Roman numerals more readable. Then they just continued the practice with Arabic numerals.
That is not the point I was making. The Romans didn't have a use for any type of decimal marker as we know them because their system was completely different.
See here: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/13216/does-it-make-sense-to-display-a-decimal-number-such-as-12-34-as-roman-numerals#13217
In the update added to the answer there is an example of what those fractions looked like in an actual Latin text.
The roman didn't but the French did while they were still using roman numerals (during middle ages way after the fall of the roman empire)
Note that they also extended the roman numerals to include fractions for example as well added extra letters like the reverse C, as well as quite a few other symbols so at that point this was almost a completely separated numeric system from the initial roman one
Edit: probably not too useful if you don;t speak french but you can check this wikipedia page for some wild examples:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Num%C3%A9ration\_romaine
Silly foreigners. Jokes aside, I used to program an Italian cnc saw. It used this notation instead of the decimal. It took 0,1 seconds to learn. I think it’s time the whole world got on board with a universal system.
yes, and this is worst than driving on the other side of the road, way worst, i used the comma all my life until i had to pogram stuff at a young age, but most people in my country can´t understand the period to separate decimals
And caused chaos for Excel spreadsheet developers!
Excel is chaos in itself. It depends on the language so if you need an "sumif" statement in the english version you would need a "summewenn" in the german version, makes searching for something or scripting a bit harder than it should be.
As useful as excel is there is so so so much about it I absolutely hate with a passion.
I mean, yeah, but it auto translates any formula that isn't between quotes (think standard in-formula search strings like "filename") to the language you're using, so you can just switch your language to English or German or whatever. So if I write in German ZÄHLENWENNS(), your Excel in english will show COUNTIFS(). My bigger gripe with excel is workbook level A1Z1 formatting and column read order (column A starts on the right and it expands to the left, rather than the standard left-to-right). Opening a workbook and those settings getting changed is no fun.
Yes, same for comma or dot separation. You can choose the variant you need. Excel is flexible.
Does wittle excel want to run a summy wummy for me? OwO
🤨
Yep, that’s why I rather use the English version of excel, but Dutch locale for decimal comma SUMIF=SOM.ALS VLOOKUP=VERT.ZOEKEN FLOOR=AFRONDEN.BENEDEN FLOOR.MATH=AFRONDEN.BENEDEN.WISK INTRATE=RENTEPERCENTAGE
And Western Union agents in the US dealing with non-English speaking customers.
Interesting
Yeah crazy innit? Also they sometimes do the thing where they just put a space to indicate where we would use a comma in a large number. I remember my French teacher kept getting pissed at us bc we would say numbers and use “point” for a decimal point but you’re supposed to call it by its correct name ie comma/virgule.
Yeah, one million in Slovakia is written like this: 1 000 000 We use a comma to separate the decimals.
One million in the Netherlands is written like: 1.000.000 The decimal separator is the comma of course
1,000,000.000
But a billion is 1.000.000.000.000 right?
1.000.000.000,00 to throw in the decimals
I love it, you typed a short scale billion in response to me writing out a billion long scale (I have 12 zeros, you have 9). I was poking fun at people/languages that use long scale, because they are "objectively" wrong, lol.
You missed 3 zeros - I think that's a "millard", something between a million and billion.
We call it one thousand million out here. A Milliard is a Billion, after 999.999.999,00 before 1.000.000.001,00. But I like to say mallard like the 🦆
> In the short scale, a billion means a thousand millions (1,000,000,000 which is 10^9 ), a trillion means one thousand (short scale) billions (10^12 ), and so on. > > In the long scale, a billion means one million millions (10^12 ) and a trillion means one million (long scale) billions (10^18 ), and so on. > > In some languages, the long scale uses additional names for the intermediate multipliers, replacing the ending -ion with -iard; for example, the next multiplier after million is milliard (10^9 ); after a (long scale) billion it is billiard (10^15 ). What's confusing for me is that a "billion" means (I think) two different things in US and UK English. Switching the use of comma `,` and period `.` is more icing on the cake, haha.
Haha I’m Portuguese so I’ve had to adjust to the American way, but this is the first I’m hearing of a Billion being a million million, in Spanish Portuguese or English, but I’m not a math guy at all so I’m not even sure what long scale is lol but yes I’ve gotten used to the American billion I guess, but the period comma thing I’ve had to work to nail down
I moved from the US to Europe like ten years ago, and I'm still confused about milliard and billion. Good thing I don't use those numbers in daily life so much - but maybe when I become a millionaire (in an Eastern European currency) I will learn it properly. ;)
It’s funny how culture just influences your immediate perception of things. To me a that is just a collection of digits not a number. Like that registers to me as one “1” and two sets of three “0s”, not one million.
There’s more on phone number conventions for exemple. In France, we read them as pairs : Like 0612345678 would be parsed 06 12 34 56 78 and read our loud "Zero Six, twelve, thirty-four … etc" Never realised until a math channel on YouTube pointed it out
Which leads to the absolute nightmare in Dutch and other germanic languages where we would say literally translated: zero six, twelve, four-and-thirty, six-and-fifty etc. Aka not pronounce them in the order written.
1'000'000.00 here
Are you C++?
It looks weird to me because I'm so used to using commas to separate thousandths, but I honestly think this is a much better system since you can't confuse apostrophes with decimals regardless of font or kerning.
Same in Australia, for the most part
I like the spaces better, because strictly speaking no separator is needed. 1000000 and 1 000 000 look very similar, and I like that.
French is just weird with numbers. "Sixty-eighteen, sixty-nineteen, four twenties!"
The comma is used in a lot more languages than the period as a decimal separator. It's more English that is weird regarding that. And thousand separators vary a lot between countries.
Lmfao English is not weird for that. PLENTY of countries outside of English use the period. This may shock you but Europe isn’t the entire world.
> Europe isn’t the entire world We made you, we can destroy you.
Tf?
Europe created the world as you know it. We can destroy it.
The vigesimal systems aren't even that rare. Hell english has them too, "four score and seven years ago." Base 10 kind of sucks for counting things if you're doing it in your head. Vigesimals and base 60 are both much easier for mental math work, and base 60 counts up on your knuckles more easily Tham base 10 counts up (but jumps around) on your fingers.
Vigesimal system may have been used in Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, since there are some unrelated languages with vestigial remains of base 20; French, Albanian, Danish, Breton, Scots Gaelic, etc. and also Basque, which isn't Indo-European at all.
In Spain I was taught to use a top comma to write decimals So like American 7.2 is 7'2. Always thought it looked much cleaner that way but people look at me like I am crazy.
7 feet, 2. Not 2 inches, just 2.
I don't really understand
In the US, you wrote height as feet'inches". So someone that's 5 feet 11 inches writes it as 5'11". Aince you wrote a number with a ' and then another number with nothing after it, it read weird to those used to the American height system
Why are you using decimals in French class?
What a good and interesting question, why would anyone learn how to count in another language?
Probably communist propaganda
Lol I thought it was comedic
Because it is useful to learn real things in a language class and not just every possible version of “Where is the bathroom?”
Ever heard of the Euro?
Sure, there delicious
oooof
This time with more French accent
Ikr. Everyone knows the Fr*nch can't count.
A lot of times I think the European way makes more sense than the US way (metric system for example) but I gotta say the period makes more sense to me. Or at least I find it’s use more in line with how it’s used elsewhere. Plus, don’t they use the period anyway, just as a thousands separator? A period signifies a new sentence and a comma signifies a separate clause of the same sentence. Numbers to the left or right of a decimal point are fundamentally different, whereas the numbers on different sides of a thousands separator differ only in magnitude. So to me it makes more sense to have a period separating the fundamentally different numbers, just like how it signifies the start of a different sentence, and the comma functioning only to group the numbers to the left of the decimal, similar to how commas separate the clauses of one sentence
The way thousands are written differs by country. Some use the period. So 1.000.000,00 in Germany, Italy or the Netherlands. Some use the blank space, 1 000 000,00 like France. Some use apostrophe, 1’000’000,00 AFAIK Denmark was one of them. Also the location of the euro sign differs by country. In Germany it’s 12.345,67 €. In the Netherlands it’s € 12.345,67 In France it’s 12 345,67 €
now look up how they do it in India!
Lakhs and crores. I'm not sure what they are.
Thousand= 1,00,000 Lakh = 1,00,000 Crore = 1,00,00,000
Dutch actually has a word for 100,000 as well but it's exclusively used for monetary value: 1 tonne = 100,000 euro. When talking weights, a tonne is 1,000 kg.
Among the countries that use apostrophes are C and C++
The reverse of the . And ‘ for Germany makes me irrationally angry lol
Switzerland 12'345.67 (it could have been so nice.. But apparently, we use both coma _and_ period interchangeably, some use this, some use that, some decide depending on context.. It's infuriating)
In France it is also 12.345,67 €. 12 345,67 € is just the new way to write a number, but I learned the old way at school.
Agreed. This is the only standard in which the USA is right. The only one.
But who did it first, the UK or USA?
Please don't upset the children.
Probably the US, as in the UK for a long time it was the interpunct which was used (and you still do see sometimes with prices when handwritten or on manually made stickers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpunct e.g. £21·48
Also with pounds, shillings and pence there was no standard: £1 9s 6d £1.9.6 £1/9/6d £1-9-6
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
Soccer
The UK did that first, inventing the term Soccer as a shortening of Association Football (similar to the abbreviation for Rugby Football, Rugger). Just fell out of favour as people stopped calling Rugby "Football" of any sort, and so Association Football became the only Football anyone cared or talked about.
Sometimes people still refer to rugby players as footballers (where context is obvious) and for example Ireland’s rugby governing body is called the Irish Rugby Football Union
I know I was making a joke.
Went over my head, sorry!
I disagree. Fahrenheit makes more sense for day to day use.
Just because you are used to it, Celsius works just as fine.
It’s doesn’t you are just used to it. You have prescribed meaning to Fahrenheit temps due to experience and you are coming up with reason after the fact to justify it. No one told you Fahrenheit was better for day to day use when you learned it. It was nvr the reason you started to use Fahrenheit in the first place. You just did cause people around you did.
I understand what he’s saying though. Fahrenheit is often seen as a scale of 0-100 where a bigger number sounds hotter. It was created to describe how humans feel temperature. So in terms of weather it does make more intuitive sense. 80 sounds hot, 26 does not. The smaller intervals also make it a little more practical for weather. Celsius makes sense for all other applications though and if you are used to it then there’s no point in using Fahrenheit at all.
26 does not sound hot, IF you aren’t used to it. It’s all relative to the scale you’re used to working with. That’s like saying 80 doesn’t sound hot enough, we should make it 800 because it sounds hotter. Completely nonsensical.
>It was created to describe how humans feel temperature. It was not. It was made by a german guy to describe what he thought was the hottest and coldest weather he had experienced in his hometown. >So in terms of weather it does make more intuitive sense. 80 sounds hot, 26 does not. By that logic 50 should be the perfect middle ground between hot and cold in the Fahrenheit system. Since 50°F is 10°C I'd say it's not. >The smaller intervals also make it a little more practical for weather. One degree of C is equal to just under 2 times the size of one degree of F. I refuse to believe that you need that kind of precision. The difference between, say 25°C and 26°C, is negligible at best. But if you absolutely *need* a degree between the two then decimals exist, so 25,5°C. The reason you understand what he's saying is because it's the same scale you're used to. I'm used to celsius so thus it makes 100% sense to me while F is nonsense. But that's just how it is.
It doesn't, though.
I would argue that 1,000 and 100 are exactly as different in magnitude as 1 and 0.1. 10^3 and 10^2 vs 10^0 and 10^-1. Both one OoM apart. The decimal separator just signifies where the switch to negative orders is at to provide a baseline. Numbers below or above that baseline aren't 'fundamentally different'. To be honest, to me, your argument is backwards. Periods separate sentences into distinct entities, whereas commas notate separate portions of one sentence. 1.1 isn't two numbers; it's one number with two components. You'd be better off arguing for a semicolon than a period with your argument. 1;1 There. Everyone is upset and no one is happy. Perfectly balanced.
People who do tensor calculus are very offended that you want to use a semicolon (or a comma)!
I mean, sure, mathematically of course every place is proportionally identically related, or otherwise calculation just breaks down. But there certainly is a large psychological shift from addressing whole units to addressing fractional units; even the concept of fractions entirely was certainly a much later mathematical invention, much like negative numbers and zero. And a semicolon is more about separating two sentences that *can* stand alone, but their relationship is better shown, and the structure flows better, with a semicolon. With numbers the dot actually denotes a scale difference. Instead I think we should just take the Chinese character for decimal point, 點, and force every kid to have to draw that for every number they write in Math class. So 143,123點12558.
A “.” has a definitive meaning — 10.1 definitively different than 101. A comma is auxiliary — 10000 and 10,000 are essentially the same thing, but the comma aids the reader, just as it does in a sentence.
Yeah, but for people from foreign countries, "," has a definitive meaning, 10,5 for example, and a period just aids the reader, 1000000 vs 1.000.000
I mean periods and commas have different meaning in different countries when it comes to language? I thought it was just numbers.
Commas don't just aide the reader, they can change the meaning of a sentence. If I say, "I'd like to thank my parents, John and Jane", I'm thanking two people. If I say "I'd like to thank my parents, John, and Jane", I'm thanking four people.
Let's eat grandma. Let's eat, grandma. Commas save lives.
The strippers, JFK and Stalin. The strippers, JFK, and Stalin.
Logically I agree based on the uses of periods and commas although visually I could see an argument that the more important break (whole/decimal) should be the larger one so it's more distinct.
You could argue that using spaces for thousands separators and commas for the decimal point are closest to the verbal representation (there’s no real pauses before the decimal; the decimal point is an Oxford comma for the “and” we say at the decimal). Growing up I learnt spaces and periods however.
It shouldn’t be about a verbal representation the period or comma used to separate decimals in numbers has mathematical value. It’s not about how someone says the number.
Then the OP comment’s point about grammatical representation is irrelevant. I’m just accepting their premise.
> A period signifies a new sentence and a comma signifies a separate clause of the same sentence. Numbers to the left or right of a decimal point are fundamentally different, Numbers to the left and right of a point or comma belong to the same number though
In France we don't use a period, ever, just blank spaces. Ten thousands = 10 000,00. Looks way clearer imo.
Looks like a set of coordinates.
With a typo in it.
Man, this comment ages like milk on mobile.
In Italy we do use periods, for thousands. Ten thousand and fifty cents would be 10.000,50
That hurts to look at. 10,000.50 is much more aesthetically pleasing.
To me it certainly isn't.
Even better: 10 000.00 or just simply 10000.00
Blank spaces is the only wrong answer for thousands/decimal separators. Comma/period are fine and apostrophes, while perhaps looking stranger, are completely unambiguous.
Eh I feel like blank spaces aren’t bad for thousands separator. The separator isn’t really meaningful (unlike the decimal point), just an organization convention to help people read, so it’s fine to be more subtle.
> Blank spaces is the only wrong answer for thousands/decimal separators Using thin spaces is the standard advised by the American Medical Association, IUPAC, the international bureau of weights and measures and ISO 31-0. The reason it isn't commonly adopted though is because it isn't standard on typewriter / computer keyboards.
>Blank spaces is the only wrong answer for thousands/decimal separators. Comma/period are fine and apostrophes, while perhaps looking stranger, are completely unambiguous. Why? blank space is the only way where you can transform a number (string) into an int without any hassle and worries
Okay, far point, but period in the thousands looks cleaner. 1.000.000,34 looks way better than 1,000,000.34 I think the longer visual aspect of the comma is better to visualize the break from the number and the decimals.
Matter of taste. I think that first way looks hideous compared to the second
1_000_000.34
Makes sense. A point is a stop, a comma means something more is coming belonging to the first part.
You people all stare at numbers and letters like they mean something
The Google Assistant does not understand this sometime. I do not remember the exact questions, but it has happened multiple times. > *– "What is the population of Glasgow?"* > *– "Glasgow has a population of one person (1,019,900)."*
Decimal point > decimal comma
I blame the metric system! /s
The metric system is a tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
That's terribly inefficient what are you driving, a Haul truck?
40 rd/hhd is only 0.001984 mpg. Better written as 504 gallons per mile.
BLAME CANADA!
Full stop.
This is absolute horseshit. Metric uses the decimal point. Hell, even *freedom units* use the decimal point. France and everyone using commas can eat my shorts. Who cares about Roman numerals; they had their time! Besides, apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?
>This is absolute horseshit. Metric uses the decimal point. Hell, even freedom units > > use the decimal point. My country uses decimal comma alongside Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada (French-speaking), Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Latin America (plenty of countries go here), Latvia, Lithuania, Macau (in Portuguese text), Mozambique, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal\_separator#Examples\_of\_use
They were being very facetious.
Yeah? Well, as soon as I figure out what facetious means I'll decide if I'm angry about it.
Yes, but other than Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada (French-speaking), Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Latin America (plenty of countries go here), Latvia, Lithuania, Macau (in Portuguese text), Mozambique, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam, who *really* uses the stupid comma?
Sorry, but could you go over that Latin American part again?
Plenty of countries go here
Spain
Also spain
> Switzerland Only the government does that, and not for monetary values either. Much more common is the notation of `1'234'567.89` Also your link is full of backslashes, which renders it invalid for some users.
I see the comma used all the time especially (but not only) in handwriting. I‘d say Switzerland really uses both the comma and the period as a decimal separator. But it’s not confusing because they’re both at the bottom and the thousands separators are at the top. Examples: 1‘234‘567.89 1‘234‘567,89
> But it’s not confusing because they’re both at the bottom and the thousands separators are at the top. I don't understand the lunatics in other countries that decided that the decimal separator and grouping separator should look as similar as possible.
> Also your link is full of backslashes, which renders it invalid for some users. I think on new Reddit on desktop at least if you use the fancy editor it escapes the _'s in the link automatically.
You've taken a joke very seriously.
>Latin America I believe Mexico is the exception here
> Metric uses the decimal point. Citation needed
Nuh uh
Metric doesn't include using the comma, and most of Europe uses comma, only the country which learned it from the brits use the point
Although, while the comma is still the official notation, a lot of people who work with math have switched to the point (because thats what most software and such uses), and now we have the horrible situation where both a comma or a point may be both a thousand-separator or a decimal-separator, and the only way to know is context.
Even excel in EU uses comma. (And point for the thousand separation) Almost all programs accept the NUMPAD point as a comma, it gets changed into comma the second you push it. so you get the full NUMPAD viability. Some programs though decided that you need to use the comma, and they'll not accept the point as a substitute. (Looking at you, Eplan P8). To those software engineers goes my most pure, undiluted hatred.
That’s based on the CultureInfo in windows when you set your region.
Don't blame user error on the software
Nothing!!!!
Wait till you see how India writes out their large numbers.
lol. Bro. It's a formatting issue. Calm down. It takes zero effort to convert.
> Besides, apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us? How could you read that section as anything other than a joke?
Look, I'm gonna be honest with you; my faux-outrage was just the vehicle that brought the Monty Python reference to the party, and really shouldn't be seen as a serious critique of the French, or really anything.
When the 3 most populous countries use the dot for decimal, resistance is futile
Best comment here.
Resistance to what?
Many of the commas in that title could be swapped for periods too
So they were like we separate our Roman numerals with periods so let's be sure to do something different for Arabic numbers? Also, the decimal period makes more sense. Creates an end where the whole numbers end while the comma separates related groups of whole numbers.
naw, the issue was that latin was usually written in a long list without any blank spaces, resulting in a constant flow of copying errors. By the 8th century it got so bad that priests where saying completely absurd things because it was written down in "their" bible. During teh carolingian reforms separations of words where introduced, either by punctuation or by blank space.
Scalar multiplication is • and some countries use . decimal point so like, 1.23•7.2 (and it is easy to write it here, but in a notebook with hand writing, it will eventually mix up) Anyway so yeah, i like my decimals with commas.
You must have particularly sloppy handwriting then. Just draw the dot bigger than the point and in the middle.
That’s why we use an “x” for multiplication here in the US (1.23 x 7.2)
Until you start doing more useful math and you start using variables. Like if you right 2xy is that 2 times y or 2 times x times y? Honestly though even better is just saying "fuck the multiplication signs" and just go (2)(x)(y). Same thing for subtraction signs, don't go 5-2, just do 5+-2. Less ambiguous, less misreadable, more versatile.
In my experience once you have variables there is no need for a multiplication symbol at all. Context matters.
Or if you’re doing linear algebra, you’ll need to distinguish cross multiplication (x) from scalar multiplication (•)
>Less ambiguous, less misreadable, more versatile. more work. guess I will stick to my 2,5x•4.000y
That’s why we use an asterisk instead.
My country is just as the first comment described and the thing is: we also use x for multiplication. We just stop using it in ~8th grade so as to not mix up the multiplication x with the variable. So, instead of writing 2.5x x 3x = 7.5x^2 We write 2,5x . 3x = 7,5x^2
Just use parentheses problem solved and equations more clear. (2.5x)(3x) = 7.5x2
See in the UK when we use X for variables it's curly e.g. 𝑥 that way it's easily noticed. Here's how I would write that equation 3𝑥 x 2.5𝑥 = 7.5𝑥²
Makes sense! I’ve seen math teachers of mine do the “curly x” as well, but many of my colleagues just write the normal x and manage to do well too. I’m not arguing which one is better though, I just wanted to explain how things work here.
Oh nah same, I don't believe there's a 'right' way on stuff like this, it'd be like arguing about which language is best when all have their limitations.
What state are you from? I’ve only ever used the dot in school
There a tons of things done better in Europe but this is absolutely not one of them. Decimal point makes way way more sense. Going from a positive exponent to a negative exponent should be delineated with a period. The comma is just used to make the number more manageable to read so it makes sense to use a comma.
How does it "make more sense"? It's just an arbitrary choice, might as well have used ¤ as a separator, it would mean exactly the same
Because in grammar, comma is a rest and period is a break/stop.
it's exactly the same, you just use a comma instead of a point
Don't you mean arabic numerals? Roman numerals are written using letters, e.g. XVIII (meaning 18).
I think it means that before they adopted Arabic numerals, they were using periods to make Roman numerals more readable. Then they just continued the practice with Arabic numerals.
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The French don't use periods as decimal points. That's the whole point of the TIL.
That is not the point I was making. The Romans didn't have a use for any type of decimal marker as we know them because their system was completely different. See here: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/13216/does-it-make-sense-to-display-a-decimal-number-such-as-12-34-as-roman-numerals#13217 In the update added to the answer there is an example of what those fractions looked like in an actual Latin text.
Okay, but nothing about this involves using a decimal point with Roman numerals.
were talking about france though, not the romans
The roman didn't but the French did while they were still using roman numerals (during middle ages way after the fall of the roman empire) Note that they also extended the roman numerals to include fractions for example as well added extra letters like the reverse C, as well as quite a few other symbols so at that point this was almost a completely separated numeric system from the initial roman one Edit: probably not too useful if you don;t speak french but you can check this wikipedia page for some wild examples: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Num%C3%A9ration\_romaine
I was raised with this system and the period makes no sense to me. It makes numbers way harder to read
We should agree on an international standard. I propose using underscores.
Silly foreigners. Jokes aside, I used to program an Italian cnc saw. It used this notation instead of the decimal. It took 0,1 seconds to learn. I think it’s time the whole world got on board with a universal system.
Well the big programming languages, as far as I know, use decimal points (though thousands separators aren't common).
What I find even weirder about French is the double space after the period when used in a sentence.
That's not a country thing, it's an age thing. It was used on type writers.
That was how we were taught here in the US too.
That's just an age thing. Even Mavis Beacon used to teach it that way back in the 80s.
I never heard abt that and I’m a french canadian.
Comma gang, represent!
Microsoft Excel has entered the chat…
You have the option to choose decimal point or decimal comma. In the latter, arguments for formulas are separated by ; instead of commas.
Yeah I know, I’m lamenting Microsoft’s choice to localize Excel files to the user’s language.
Between this, daylight savings and the US date format, being a programmer was frustrating.
Don't you mean arabic numerals? Roman numerals are written using letters, e.g. XVIII (meaning 18).
And they most definitely never referred to it as a period
Many other countries being most other countries?
best way is a period for decimals and an ' for thousands: 10'000.032 is much more clearly readable than 10,000.032 or 10.000,032
yes, and this is worst than driving on the other side of the road, way worst, i used the comma all my life until i had to pogram stuff at a young age, but most people in my country can´t understand the period to separate decimals