I Had A Random Thought...

[Mangela Lansbury]

Fun fact about German large numbers, as far as I can remember from high school (11 years ago?): Billion is German for one trillion, while a billion is some weird French sounding thing like ein Milliarde(?).

 

This might not be true. I might be making it up from misremembered bullshit.

[Apelsin]

Same thing in Swedish. 

 

Miljon = 10^6

Miljard = 10^9

Biljon = 10^12

Biljard = 10^15

Triljon = 10^18

[syntheticgerbil]

I just realized today that there is a difference between Megabits and Megabytes. I had been calling internet speeds "Megabytes per second"  for years. I feel extremely stupid.

[Merus]

Actually in British English a billion is a million million, not a thousand million. It's in American English where a billion is a thousand million, and because Americans actually have use for the word 'billion', that meaning has crept into other dialects.

[SecretAsianMan]

I just realized today that there is a difference between Megabits and Megabytes. I had been calling internet speeds "Megabytes per second"  for years. I feel extremely stupid.

 

It's not entirely your fault.  Advertising and the Internet at large have done a great job of obfuscating what the difference between them is.

[Blambo]

What do you call a Sonic convention?

[elmuerte]

I just realized today that there is a difference between Megabits and Megabytes. I had been calling internet speeds "Megabytes per second"  for years. I feel extremely stupid.

 

Actually.. it's mebibit and mebibytes. It's 10^N vs 2^N

[Bjorn]

What do you call a Sonic convention?

 

 

I'll bite. What do you call a Sonic Convention?

[Blambo]

A gotta go fest.

 

Anyway about the base system thing it's cool to see which cultures developed numbers from counting on their fingers versus dividing the day into twos or threes. Any other people speak a language with weird units?

[eot]

Japanese also uses 10,000 as a base for large numbers, but they got that from the Chinese so I guess it doesn't count (haha).

[undermind9]

I hate measuring things in inches.  12 in. = 1 ft.  What a fucking dumb system.

 

thanks to my job in light-manufacturing of large objects my memorized times table has expanded from 12x12 to 12x25 which makes for a neat skill among the non-maths people

[Bjorn]

thanks to my job in light-manufacturing of large objects my memorized times table has expanded from 12x12 to 12x25 which makes for a neat skill among the non-maths people

I get super bored when I go in to the dentist (which I do every 4 months because my teeth stain so quickly from being a heavy coffee drink and smoker). So as I'm stuck in the chair listening to the buzzing of the weird tool that makes my teeth white again, I practice times tables, particularly focusing 13-20.

I am a dork.

[Dewar]

When I'm having a hard time going to sleep sometimes I try to get higher in the basic Fibonacci sequence than I've ever gotten before. I blame this on 3-2-1 Contact!

[Griddlelol]

I have a confession:

 

I never learned my times tables except for 2 and 5 because they were easy. Now I'm in science. I'm a terrible person.

[dibs]

That's ok. When i tell people i work as a mathematician of sorts (easiest explanation) they often give me difficult multiplications to do in my head to prove myself. Not a clue. When i was younger, i used to do calculus problems in my head though, to gauge how drunk i was.

[elmuerte]

Quick, what's 13 times 18 in base 8?

[CollegeBaby]

Fun fact about German large numbers, as far as I can remember from high school (11 years ago?): Billion is German for one trillion, while a billion is some weird French sounding thing like ein Milliarde(?).

 

This might not be true. I might be making it up from misremembered bullshit.

 

No you're right. English used to be like that but changed for some reason. Most European countries apparently keep the old system. When a billion is referred to as being 1,000,000,000,000, or 10¹², or one-million-million, what is now called a billion or 10⁹ is called milliard. Milliard means one-thousand-million. Variations of this word are used in most other European languages. 10¹⁵ or one-thousand-billion is a billiard. 10¹⁸ becomes a trillion. 10²¹ or one-thousand-trillion is a trilliard and so on. The reason being that a billion is one-million-million (1,000,000²) and a trillion is one-million-million-million (1,000,000³).

 

Long and Short scale comparison.

 

Speaking of weird naming conventions, Americans get rants from Commonwealth nations for supposedly butchering English, but I have to say they are in the right for abbreviating the word Mathematics to Math instead of Maths, which is the way it tends to be said in other English speaking countries. Mathematics doesn't have an 's' at the end because it is a plural. You don't have "one Mathematic" or "many Mathematics". I believe the 's' exists because it refers to a noun, as opposed to the adjective on which the word is based. Mathematic is the adjective - Mathematics is the field of Mathematic study. Aerobic is the adjective - Aerobics is the field of Aerobic techniques.

 

#StopSayingMaths2014

[Twig]

I just say maths fairly often because it sounds sorta funny. Maybe they're all doing it for the same reason! (I'm American.) (I know this isn't why they're doing it.)

[CollegeBaby]

When I studied economics in highschool people often shortened it to "econ". Maybe you could start calling it "econs".

[Twig]

Sold. Doin' it.

[undermind9]

i also think its funny, and hadn't heard it said "maths" until only the last few months on some podcasts in my rotation - and am pretty sure they are also making fun of it

 

*edit - "Econs" is great! totes using that, thanks for helping my abrevs vocab, obvi will boost my intel

[SecretAsianMan]

When I studied economics in highschool people often shortened it to "econ". Maybe you could start calling it "econs".

 

Econ is a common shortening for economics.  In college we referred to all the different engineering disciplines as "____E", as in MechE for mechanical, CivE for civil, ChemE for chemical, etc.  The exception was electrical engineers who were double E or ECE (electrical computer engineering).

[Zeusthecat]

I shaved my beard off last night. First time going beardless in a few years. I'm worried about how this will affect me psychologically. Like, I don't recognize that person looking back at me in the mirror any more. Is that just me without a beard or did some weird looking pseudo-doppleganger switch places with me as the last piece of beard came off? I don't know. I kind of strongly identified as a dude with a beard and now that that part of me is gone I guess I'm a different person. So out with the old Zeus and in with the new Zeus I guess.

[Twig]

that's okay the best zeus doesn't have a beard anyway

 

 

has a baller stache though i mean look at that thing

[Bjorn]

I'm still recovering from the shock of shaving for my Halloween costume. I was going to stay clean shaven for awhile, but that got nixed pretty quick, so it's in the process of growing back out now.

I literally do not recognize myself in pictures without my beard. I don't think I look bad, I just look like a radically different person.