Zero Points?
Farhad
Should a noun preceded by "zero" be used in singular or plural form?
For example, should the noun "point" in the following sentence be used
with plural -s or not?
Correct answers were assigned 1 point and incorrect answers 0 point
(s).
Farhad
Cheryl
Zero points.
It doesn't seem very logical, though, does it? But then, English isn't
very logical.
--
Cheryl
Peter Moylan
Likewise, in a context where non-integral points are possible:
3.5 points
0.5 points
and even
1.0 points
We use the singular only when the number of points is equal to
integer 1. Note that the real number 1.0 doesn't qualify.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Don Phillipson
news:61d5255f-fb60-449d...@g6g2000vbr.googlegroups.com...
A better variant:
Correct answers earn one point each and incorrect answers no points.
Notes:
1. Newspaper style (and similar) is that numerals below 10 should
be written in full, not in Arabic notation.
2. Zero (0) is not a number like other numbers, thus cannot indicate
the score-value assigned to a wrong answer. What actually occurs
is that wrong answers earn no values at all, as the revised sentence
says.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Nick Spalding
on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:50:18 +1000:
> Cheryl wrote:
> > Farhad wrote:
> >> Dear All,
> >>
> >> Should a noun preceded by "zero" be used in singular or plural form?
> >> For example, should the noun "point" in the following sentence be used
> >> with plural -s or not?
> >>
> >> Correct answers were assigned 1 point and incorrect answers 0 point
> >> (s).
> >>
> >> Farhad
> >
> > Zero points.
> >
> > It doesn't seem very logical, though, does it? But then, English isn't
> > very logical.
>
> Likewise, in a context where non-integral points are possible:
>
> 3.5 points
> 0.5 points
> and even
> 1.0 points
>
> We use the singular only when the number of points is equal to
> integer 1. Note that the real number 1.0 doesn't qualify.
And in a context where negative points are possible I would say -1
points, it's only the unadorned 1 that is point.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Peter Moylan
> "Farhad" <fvaf...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:61d5255f-fb60-449d...@g6g2000vbr.googlegroups.com...
>
>> Should a noun preceded by "zero" be used in singular or plural form?
>> For example, should the noun "point" in the following sentence be used
>> with plural -s or not?
>>
>> Correct answers were assigned 1 point and incorrect answers 0 point
>> (s).
>
> A better variant:
> Correct answers earn one point each and incorrect answers no points.
> Notes:
> 1. Newspaper style (and similar) is that numerals below 10 should
> be written in full, not in Arabic notation.
Yes, but examination style tends to lean in the other direction,
preferring the Arabic notation as being clearer than the words.
In a formal examination, in my experience, both versions are given:
"Correct answers earn one (1) point each and incorrect answers
earn zero (0) points."
(I would find it awkward to use "no" in that last sentence.)
> 2. Zero (0) is not a number like other numbers, thus cannot indicate
> the score-value assigned to a wrong answer. What actually occurs
> is that wrong answers earn no values at all, as the revised sentence
> says.
I don't follow this. It's been several centuries since the West
finally realised that zero is a number just like other numbers.
Denying that it's a number creates all sorts of headaches.
Bertel Lund Hansen
> Zero points.
> It doesn't seem very logical, though, does it? But then, English isn't
> very logical.
I think it is. In fact I don't buy the notion that languages are
illogical. It is just not always that the obvious 'logic' is the
right one.
Danish, German and French also use plural with "zero" when
talking about a number. "The zero point" is of course different.
Likewise we say: "There are no human beings" - plural again. I
guess (!) that the logic is: "Of all the possible, nice people
that could have attended, none of them chose to do so."
--
Bertel, Denmark
Bertel Lund Hansen
> Likewise, in a context where non-integral points are possible:
> 3.5 points
> 0.5 points
> and even
> 1.0 points
How about 0.1?
--
Bertel, Denmark
Peter Moylan
> Peter Moylan skrev:
>
>> Likewise, in a context where non-integral points are possible:
>
>> 3.5 points
>> 0.5 points
>> and even
>> 1.0 points
>
> How about 0.1?
Still "0.1 points" in that case. Also "j1 points" or "1.0i points" [1],
if you're willing to allocate imaginary points.
[1] The people who write "i" use it as a suffix, while the
people who write "j" write it as a prefix. I don't know why.
Lars Eighner
the lovely and talented Bertel Lund Hansen broadcast on alt.usage.english:
> Cheryl skrev:
>> Zero points.
>> It doesn't seem very logical, though, does it? But then, English isn't
>> very logical.
> I think it is. In fact I don't buy the notion that languages are
> illogical. It is just not always that the obvious 'logic' is the
> right one.
> Danish, German and French also use plural with "zero" when
> talking about a number.
It seems to me when "zero" does mean "zero" no unit should be used at all.
0 apples is the same a 0 oranges. Of course in many temperature scales,
latitude, longitude, and so forth, "zero" does not really mean "zero."
> "The zero point" is of course different.
> Likewise we say: "There are no human beings" - plural again. I
> guess (!) that the logic is: "Of all the possible, nice people
> that could have attended, none of them chose to do so."
--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> September 5845, 1993
223 days since Rick Warren prayed over Bush's third term.
Obama: No hope, no change, more of the same. Yes, he can, but no, he won't.
Jerry Friedman
> Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> > Peter Moylan skrev:
>
> >> Likewise, in a context where non-integral points are possible:
>
> >> 3.5 points
> >> 0.5 points
> >> and even
> >> 1.0 points
>
> > How about 0.1?
>
> Still "0.1 points" in that case.
The science magazine I used to work for used the singular with numbers
between 0 and 1, so 0.5 point. That's not very common (though we may
have gotten it from the Chicago style manual, which we mostly
followed).
> Also "j1 points" or "1.0i points" [1],
> if you're willing to allocate imaginary points.
>
> [1] The people who write "i" use it as a suffix, while the
> people who write "j" write it as a prefix. I don't know why.
Algebra textbooks I've taught with write things like
sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
Just to annoy me, as far as I can tell.
--
Jerry Friedman
Bertel Lund Hansen
> It seems to me when "zero" does mean "zero" no unit should be used at all.
If you start a conversation by remarking "There are zero here.",
it's difficult to know what you mean.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Bertel Lund Hansen
> > Also "j1 points" or "1.0i points" [1],
> Algebra textbooks I've taught with write things like
> sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
> Just to annoy me, as far as I can tell.
No, it's quite logical. We write "7 x", "2 pi" and "3 e", so we
also write "2 i". I is a number.
I am not familiar with any j-notation.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Don Phillipson
> > 2. Zero (0) is not a number like other numbers, thus cannot indicate
> > the score-value assigned to a wrong answer. What actually occurs
> > is that wrong answers earn no values at all, as the revised sentence
> > says.
"Peter Moylan" <pe...@pmoylan.org> wrote in message
news:RJmdnSBfGoG0jwDX...@westnet.com.au...
> I don't follow this. It's been several centuries since the West
> finally realised that zero is a number just like other numbers.
> Denying that it's a number creates all sorts of headaches.
"Like other numbers" is what counts above. The most obvious
difference is that every number can be the divisor in a fraction,
but 1/0 is arithmetically meaningless. I do not doubt that zero
is essential for arithmetical operations and it is often useful to
treat it like a number -- yet it remains different from all other numbers.
Our chronology has no year zero: the year AD1 is preceded
immediately by the year BC1, not by BC 0; the quasi-number
zero has no ordinal adjective, and so on. In marks for examinations,
zero is not the quantity of an earned score: it is no mark at all. and
thus unlike other numbers.
Nick Spalding
on Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:51:00 -0400:
> > Don Phillipson wrote:
>
> > > 2. Zero (0) is not a number like other numbers, thus cannot indicate
> > > the score-value assigned to a wrong answer. What actually occurs
> > > is that wrong answers earn no values at all, as the revised sentence
> > > says.
>
> "Peter Moylan" <pe...@pmoylan.org> wrote in message
> news:RJmdnSBfGoG0jwDX...@westnet.com.au...
>
> > I don't follow this. It's been several centuries since the West
> > finally realised that zero is a number just like other numbers.
> > Denying that it's a number creates all sorts of headaches.
>
> "Like other numbers" is what counts above. The most obvious
> difference is that every number can be the divisor in a fraction,
> but 1/0 is arithmetically meaningless. I do not doubt that zero
> is essential for arithmetical operations and it is often useful to
> treat it like a number -- yet it remains different from all other numbers.
> Our chronology has no year zero: the year AD1 is preceded
> immediately by the year BC1, not by BC 0;
That is surely because the BC/AD dating system predates the West's
importing of the notion of zero.
> the quasi-number
> zero has no ordinal adjective, and so on. In marks for examinations,
> zero is not the quantity of an earned score: it is no mark at all. and
> thus unlike other numbers.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Bertel Lund Hansen
> "Like other numbers" is what counts above. The most obvious
> difference is that every number can be the divisor in a fraction,
> but 1/0 is arithmetically meaningless.
1 has a unique property. It is unlike any other number. If you
multiply a number with 1, the result is the same. I can find
unique properties for any number you'd care to name.
We still call them a number like any other number.
> Our chronology has no year zero:
That is hardly a mathematical property but a special feature of
our chronology.
> zero has no ordinal adjective,
Oh?
http://hypography.com/forums/physics-and-mathematics/547-0-to-0th-power.html
--
Bertel, Denmark
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>Don Phillipson wrote, in <h7jcvp$1kc$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca>
> on Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:51:00 -0400:
>
>> > Don Phillipson wrote:
>>
>> > > 2. Zero (0) is not a number like other numbers, thus cannot indicate
>> > > the score-value assigned to a wrong answer. What actually occurs
>> > > is that wrong answers earn no values at all, as the revised sentence
>> > > says.
>>
>> "Peter Moylan" <pe...@pmoylan.org> wrote in message
>> news:RJmdnSBfGoG0jwDX...@westnet.com.au...
>>
>> > I don't follow this. It's been several centuries since the West
>> > finally realised that zero is a number just like other numbers.
>> > Denying that it's a number creates all sorts of headaches.
>>
>> "Like other numbers" is what counts above. The most obvious
>> difference is that every number can be the divisor in a fraction,
>> but 1/0 is arithmetically meaningless. I do not doubt that zero
>> is essential for arithmetical operations and it is often useful to
>> treat it like a number -- yet it remains different from all other numbers.
>> Our chronology has no year zero: the year AD1 is preceded
>> immediately by the year BC1, not by BC 0;
>
>That is surely because the BC/AD dating system predates the West's
>importing of the notion of zero.
Not quite. Dates BC and AD are given as ordinal numbers, year numbers,
not years elapsed.
AD 1 (or 1 AD) is the First Year of Our Lord.
This year, 2009 AD, is the Two Thousand and Ninth Year of Our Lord.
1 BC is the First Year before the birth of Christ (counting backwards of
course).
The fact that Our Lord was not born on 1 January 0000 is a mere
technicality.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Garrett Wollman
Bertel Lund Hansen <unos...@lundhansen.dk> wrote:
>1 has a unique property. It is unlike any other number. If you
>multiply a number with 1, the result is the same. I can find
>unique properties for any number you'd care to name.
The rational numbers being a field, both 0 (the additive identity) and
1 (the multiplicative identity) have such a unique property.
>> [Don Phillipson:]
>> Our chronology has no year zero:
>
>That is hardly a mathematical property but a special feature of
>our chronology.
"Our" chronology? Many people whose business is dating things do use
the year zero.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Jerry Friedman
> Jerry Friedman skrev:
>
> > > Also "j1 points" or "1.0i points" [1],
> > Algebra textbooks I've taught with write things like
> > sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
> > Just to annoy me, as far as I can tell.
>
> No, it's quite logical. We write "7 x", "2 pi" and "3 e", so we
> also write "2 i". I is a number.
Yes, but we'd write "3 sqrt(2) e", with the e at the end, so why not
put i at the end too? (Maybe it wasn't clear that by sqrt( ) I meant
the square-root sign.)
> I am not familiar with any j-notation.
Used in electrical engineering. In AC circuit analysis, it's common
for "I" to represent the current amplitude and "i" the current as a
function of time (more or less), in which case "j" is used for sqrt
(-1).
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
However, if you're averaging scores to calculate a student's grade,
and the student got "no marks" on some assignment, you'll want to
include a score of 0 in your average and calculate with that like any
other number. Especially if you're using the AVERAGE function in a
spreadsheet.
--
Jerry Friedman
Arfur Million
"Zeroth" is the ordinal adjective. I do not see in what way a zero
mark in an examination is treated differently from other scores. It
will be added to the total like any other mark (including negative
marks that you can "earn" in some examinations). If it is a total it
will be reported like any other score. In some circumstances it would
be taken to indicate the difference between scoring zero in the exam
(or question) and not doing the exam at all.
Regards,
Arfur
JimboCat
> On Sep 1, 7:08 am, Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org> wrote:
>
> > Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> > > Peter Moylan skrev:
>
> > >> Likewise, in a context where non-integral points are possible:
>
> > >> 3.5 points
> > >> 0.5 points
> > >> and even
> > >> 1.0 points
>
> > > How about 0.1?
>
> > Still "0.1 points" in that case.
Pronounced "point one points", of course.
> The science magazine I used to work for used the singular with numbers
> between 0 and 1, so 0.5 point. That's not very common (though we may
> have gotten it from the Chicago style manual, which we mostly
> followed).
Would that be pronounced "point five point" or "half a point"? The
first sounds exceedingly odd...
Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"Without geometry, life is pointless."
the Omrud
At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
but it didn't take.
--
David
Jerry Friedman
> On Sep 1, 10:23 am, Jerry Friedman <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 1, 7:08 am, Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org> wrote:
>
> > > Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> > > > Peter Moylan skrev:
>
> > > >> Likewise, in a context where non-integral points are possible:
>
> > > >> 3.5 points
> > > >> 0.5 points
> > > >> and even
> > > >> 1.0 points
>
> > > > How about 0.1?
>
> > > Still "0.1 points" in that case.
>
> Pronounced "point one points", of course.
>
> > The science magazine I used to work for used the singular with numbers
> > between 0 and 1, so 0.5 point. That's not very common (though we may
> > have gotten it from the Chicago style manual, which we mostly
> > followed).
Apparently Chicago now recommends the plural for all numbers other
than 1. (They may have done that then, too.)
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Plurals/Plurals06.html
> Would that be pronounced "point five point" or "half a point"? The
> first sounds exceedingly odd...
Pronunciation was up to the reader. We were just writing. I think,
though, that if we read it aloud, we would have said "point five
point".
> Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
> --
> "Without geometry, life is pointless."
Shalam ching!
--
Jerry Friedman
James Hogg
<snip>
>At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>but it didn't take.
The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
I too have tried introducing new abbreviations which avoid titles
like Lord and Messiah and instead use the name of the man on whom
the system is based. We could have After Jesus and Before Jesus.
My system was devised primarily for use in Ireland, with Irish
pronunciation in mind. Many people pronounce the letter A as
"Ah", not "Ay", so the terms would be "Ah Jaysus" and Be Jaysus".
That didn't take either.
--
James
Cheryl
always seemed a bit silly to me - the abbreviation is changed, but the
dating system under it isn't in precisely the way that the new
abbreviation is suppposed to avoid.
I've always suspected that for a lot of people, the initials BC and AD
were understood as referring to dates rather than to a particular
religion's way of calculating dates anyway. Changing the Official
Initials doesn't seem to change anything, really, as far as I can see.
Of course, I don't have a completely non-religious method of dating
things to propose, either.
--
Cheryl
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
You are almost certainly aware that CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before
Common Era) are used as secular alternatives to AD and BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era
JimboCat
The ordinal of zero is "zeroth". Popular usages include "the zeroth
law of thermodynamics", "zeroth power" (e.g. 10^0) and "the zeroth law
of robotics" (the meta-law contained in, or derived from, Asimov's
"three laws of robotics").
The stupidity of there being no year zero is much lamented by those to
whom it matters. It is an historical artifact, not a consequence of
the uniqueness of zero.
And the fact that 1/0 = NaN ("not a number") is no different from the
fact that 0/0 and ∞/∞ each equal NaN, rather than equalling one (1):
it is mere convention.
Zero does, indeed, have some unique properties, but so does one, and
both are perfectly legitimate numbers.
Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
roses are &H0000FF&
violets are &HFF0000&
all my base
are belong to you
the Omrud
> Quoth the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com>, and I quote:
>
> <snip>
>> At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>> but it didn't take.
>
> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
As a young person, without yet having the benefit of Latin, I imagined
that if BC was Before Christ, AD must stand for After Died.
--
David
Christian Weisgerber
> > sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
>
> No, it's quite logical. We write "7 x", "2 pi" and "3 e", so we
> also write "2 i". I is a number.
>
> I am not familiar with any j-notation.
'j' is used by electrical engineers since 'i' is already used for
current.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Evan Kirshenbaum
> And the fact that 1/0 = NaN ("not a number")
It does? It's positive infinity in Java[1], and I think that this is
the behavior required by the IEEE 754 Floating Point standard, which
is the one that introduced NaNs. 0.0/0.0 returns NaN, but any other
numerator gives you positive or negative infinity depending on the
signs of the numerator and denominator[2]
As a second point, a NaN doesn't equal anything, including itself.
[1] Okay, 1.0/0 or 1/0.0 are. 1/0 will throw an exception.
[2] Yeah, IEEE floating point distinguishes between 0.0 and -0.0.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |In the beginning, there were no
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |reasons, there were only causes.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | Daniel Dennet
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Mike Barnes
>I've always suspected that for a lot of people, the initials BC and AD
>were understood as referring to dates rather than to a particular
>religion's way of calculating dates anyway. Changing the Official
>Initials doesn't seem to change anything, really, as far as I can see.
Well, it changes the initials, and that's obviously important to some
people. I'm not a christian but I have no problem with AD and BC, as
long as no-one tries to attribute any significance to them. My
understanding is that historians have little or no confidence that
Christ was actually born at the origin of our calendar.
--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England
Lurfys Maw
wrote:
>Quoth the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com>, and I quote:
>
><snip>
>>At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>>but it didn't take.
>
>The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
>is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
>accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
>hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
Really? I had no idea those terms have a religious basis.
And not everyone accepts Jesus Christ as their savior? Now that's what
I call a "revelation".
Thanks for the "enlightenment".
Lurfys Maw
>James Hogg wrote:
>> Quoth the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com>, and I quote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>> At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>>> but it didn't take.
>>
>> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
>> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
>> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
>> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>>
>> I too have tried introducing new abbreviations which avoid titles
>> like Lord and Messiah and instead use the name of the man on whom
>> the system is based. We could have After Jesus and Before Jesus.
>> My system was devised primarily for use in Ireland, with Irish
>> pronunciation in mind. Many people pronounce the letter A as
>> "Ah", not "Ay", so the terms would be "Ah Jaysus" and Be Jaysus".
>>
>> That didn't take either.
>>
>But the dating system itself isn't religiously neutral! That's why BCE
>always seemed a bit silly to me - the abbreviation is changed, but the
>dating system under it isn't in precisely the way that the new
>abbreviation is suppposed to avoid.
So, if you were in charge of determining how the whole world reckons
dates, what would you do? Change all of the calendars in the world?
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Well, it changes the initials, and that's obviously important to some
> people. I'm not a christian but I have no problem with AD and BC, as
> long as no-one tries to attribute any significance to them. My
> understanding is that historians have little or no confidence that
> Christ was actually born at the origin of our calendar.
I don't think anybody's believed it for centuries. James Ussher, who
in the 17th century dated the creation of the world as happening on
Saturday, October 23, 4004 BC (just at nightfall), gave Jesus's birth
as having taken place in 4 BC. (For the Gospels to be true, Herod the
Great had to still be alive, and he died in 4 BC.)
Gould has noted that it wasn't coincidence that Ussher had world
created precisely 4,000 years before Jesus was born. It was important
that the history of the world mirror the creation story, with each day
representing a millennium, and with Jesus born at the beginning of
some day and returning at the beginning of the seventh "day".
Clearly, it hadn't happened in 997, and there was too much history in
the bible for the world to have started in 3004 BC, so it must have
been 4004 BC, and the biblical numbers could be made to fit.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |All tax revenue is the result of
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |holding a gun to somebody's head.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |Not paying taxes is against the law.
|If you don't pay your taxes, you'll
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |be fined. If you don't pay the fine,
(650)857-7572 |you'll be jailed. If you try to
|escape from jail, you'll be shot.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | P.J. O'Rourke
Cheryl
> So, if you were in charge of determining how the whole world reckons
> dates, what would you do? Change all of the calendars in the world?
You snipped the bit where I said I didn't have an alternative dating system.
I was merely pointing out a certain lack of logic in the process of
making a dating system based on a religion into a secular one by merely
changing the name.
More or less based on a religion, that is, of course. I don't think the
exact date of Jesus' birth is of any particular importance to
Christians, except for the subset who like trying to figure out the
right one.
--
Cheryl
John O'Flaherty
<use...@larseighner.com> wrote:
>In our last episode, <055q959bcqbi99f4d...@news.stofanet.dk>,
>the lovely and talented Bertel Lund Hansen broadcast on alt.usage.english:
>
>> Cheryl skrev:
>
>>> Zero points.
>
>>> It doesn't seem very logical, though, does it? But then, English isn't
>>> very logical.
>
>> I think it is. In fact I don't buy the notion that languages are
>> illogical. It is just not always that the obvious 'logic' is the
>> right one.
>
>> Danish, German and French also use plural with "zero" when
>> talking about a number.
>
>It seems to me when "zero" does mean "zero" no unit should be used at all.
>0 apples is the same a 0 oranges. Of course in many temperature scales,
>latitude, longitude, and so forth, "zero" does not really mean "zero."
You have to be able to distinguish between zero volts and zero
apricots, though. Come to think of it, zero oranges isn't the same as
zero apples, if you're telling someone what needs restocking.
>> "The zero point" is of course different.
>
>> Likewise we say: "There are no human beings" - plural again. I
>> guess (!) that the logic is: "Of all the possible, nice people
>> that could have attended, none of them chose to do so."
Instead we got this impossible lot!
--
John
John O'Flaherty
I don't think that's right. No mark at all might mean the condition of
someone who hasn't taken the test but will do so later. A zero score,
meaning all wrong answers, is a mark like any other.
--
John
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com> wrote:
>
>At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>but it didn't take.
>
A nice rhyme with Yule.
Mark Brader
> The science magazine I used to work for used the singular with numbers
> between 0 and 1, so 0.5 point.
To me both singular and plural seem correct with numbers between 0 and 1
expressed as decimals. Expressed as fractions, only singular is possible.
I would probably pronounce "0.5 point" as "zero point five of a point"
while "0.5 points" is "zero point view points". "1/2 point" might be
pronounced "one-half point", "a half point", or "half a point".
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "However, 0.02283% failure might be better than 50%
m...@vex.net | failure, depending on your needs." --Norman Diamond
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Glenn Knickerbocker
> sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
It's for pronounceability (and legibility when the top bar is left off
the square root sign). If you say "two eye radical three," there's no
question of what you mean. "Two radical three eye," on the other hand,
might leave the listener wondering whether you meant 2 i sqrt(3) or
(i+1) sqrt(6).
�R
Mike Page
The distinction did not occur to the designers of our student records
system. It is sometimes necessary to give a student one mark just for
turning up to the exam. Failure to make the distinction can have large
implications for the amount the UK government funds a university for
teaching the student.
--
Mike Page
Google me at port.ac.uk if you need to send an email.
Glenn Knickerbocker
> James Hogg wrote:
> > hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
> always seemed a bit silly to me - the abbreviation is changed, but the
> dating system under it isn't in precisely the way that the new
> abbreviation is suppposed to avoid.
I think "Christian Era" was quite a reasonable way to describe the
religious calendar without the religious bias of forcing non-Christians
to call Jesus *dominus* or Christ. Changing it to "Common Era" is the
part that doesn't make sense to me, as if Christian experience were
common to everyone. Kofi Annan says I'm wrong, though: "People of all
faiths have taken to using it simply as a matter of convenience. . . .
And so the Christian Era has become the Common Era."
�R
Mike Lyle
> Quoth the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com>, and I quote:
>
> <snip>
>> At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>> but it didn't take.
>
> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
Not only clumsy, but factually inaccurate. I'm surprised nobody objected
to BCE on the obvious grounds that it isn't common at all: it isn't
common to anybody except those of Christian heritage. At least "BC" and
"AD" were in widespread use, even if they implied a doctrine. I think we
could do a lot worse than go back to dating from the traditional
foundation of the city of Rome, lightly Gregorianized.
>
[...]
> "Ah", not "Ay", so the terms would be "Ah Jaysus" and Be Jaysus".
>
> That didn't take either.
A tarrible shame, so it is. (It seems we missed a good tercentenary in
'99: Radio 3 today told me that Molly Malone was real, and died of the
famous faver in 1699.)
--
Mike.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>Mike Barnes writes:
>>
>>> Well, it changes the initials, and that's obviously important to
>>> some people. I'm not a christian but I have no problem with AD and
>>> BC, as long as no-one tries to attribute any significance to
>>> them. My understanding is that historians have little or no
>>> confidence that Christ was actually born at the origin of our
>>> calendar.
>>
>>I don't think anybody's believed it for centuries. James Ussher,
>>who in the 17th century dated the creation of the world as happening
>>on Saturday, October 23, 4004 BC (just at nightfall), gave Jesus's
>>birth as having taken place in 4 BC. (For the Gospels to be true,
>>Herod the Great had to still be alive, and he died in 4 BC.)
>>
>>Gould has noted that it wasn't coincidence that Ussher had world
>>created precisely 4,000 years before Jesus was born. It was
>>important that the history of the world mirror the creation story,
>>with each day representing a millennium, and with Jesus born at the
>>beginning of some day and returning at the beginning of the seventh
>>"day". Clearly, it hadn't happened in 997, and there was too much
>>history in the bible for the world to have started in 3004 BC, so it
>>must have been 4004 BC, and the biblical numbers could be made to
>>fit.
>>
>
> And of course, Jesus and his disciples would never have used the
> Hebrew Calendar reckoning because it would be inconvenient for later
> Christians.
It wouldn't have have made much difference what calendar was used,
would it? The Hebrew calendar is 12 7/19 lunar months long (seven
years out of nineteen have an extra month), The current rules put it
[Wikis] about six and a half minutes longer than than the mean solar
year, but even back then I wouldn't think it would have been too far
off the Gregorian calendar over the course of six thousand years.
> God never used a calendar, so what's all the fuss about?
Of course he did. He even established it:
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This
month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be
the first of the months of the year for you. [Ex. 12:1-2]
Of course that "for you" implies that not everybody was expected to
use the same calendar. He even names one in the Ten Commandments:
You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread--eating unleavened
bread for seven days, as I have commanded you--at the set time of
the month of Abib, for in the month of Abib you went forth from
Egypt. [Ex. 34:18]
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Now and then an innocent man is sent
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to the legislature.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | Kim Hubbard
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Bertel Lund Hansen
> >That is hardly a mathematical property but a special feature of
> >our chronology.
> "Our" chronology?
Okay, our ... eh, the official christian calendar of today then.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Bertel Lund Hansen
> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
Not only that. Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first
year. Most people agree that he was born at least three years
before that, and some put his birth as far back as 7 years B.C.
There's recursion for you.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Hatunen
<spal...@iol.ie> wrote:
>Don Phillipson wrote, in <h7jcvp$1kc$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca>
> on Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:51:00 -0400:
>
>> > Don Phillipson wrote:
>>
>> > > 2. Zero (0) is not a number like other numbers, thus cannot indicate
>> > > the score-value assigned to a wrong answer. What actually occurs
>> > > is that wrong answers earn no values at all, as the revised sentence
>> > > says.
>>
>> "Peter Moylan" <pe...@pmoylan.org> wrote in message
>> news:RJmdnSBfGoG0jwDX...@westnet.com.au...
>>
>> > I don't follow this. It's been several centuries since the West
>> > finally realised that zero is a number just like other numbers.
>> > Denying that it's a number creates all sorts of headaches.
>>
>> "Like other numbers" is what counts above. The most obvious
>> difference is that every number can be the divisor in a fraction,
>> but 1/0 is arithmetically meaningless. I do not doubt that zero
>> is essential for arithmetical operations and it is often useful to
>> treat it like a number -- yet it remains different from all other numbers.
>> Our chronology has no year zero: the year AD1 is preceded
>> immediately by the year BC1, not by BC 0;
>
>That is surely because the BC/AD dating system predates the West's
>importing of the notion of zero.
The centuries are not cardinal numbers, they are ordinal numbers,
first century, second century, etc. It is not "the year AD1", it
is "the first century AD". There can be no zeroeth century.
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Hatunen
<unos...@lundhansen.dk> wrote:
>Don Phillipson skrev:
>
>> "Like other numbers" is what counts above. The most obvious
>> difference is that every number can be the divisor in a fraction,
>> but 1/0 is arithmetically meaningless.
>
>1 has a unique property. It is unlike any other number. If you
>multiply a number with 1, the result is the same. I can find
>unique properties for any number you'd care to name.
>
>We still call them a number like any other number.
>
>> Our chronology has no year zero:
>
>That is hardly a mathematical property but a special feature of
>our chronology.
>
>> zero has no ordinal adjective,
>
>Oh?
>
>http://hypography.com/forums/physics-and-mathematics/547-0-to-0th-power.html
The phycicists do have a Zeroeth law of Thermodynamics.
Hatunen
(Garrett Wollman) wrote:
>In article <0vfq95pegknbrm5ti...@news.stofanet.dk>,
>Bertel Lund Hansen <unos...@lundhansen.dk> wrote:
>>1 has a unique property. It is unlike any other number. If you
>>multiply a number with 1, the result is the same. I can find
>>unique properties for any number you'd care to name.
>
>The rational numbers being a field, both 0 (the additive identity) and
>1 (the multiplicative identity) have such a unique property.
>
>>> [Don Phillipson:]
>>> Our chronology has no year zero:
>>
>>That is hardly a mathematical property but a special feature of
>>our chronology.
>
>"Our" chronology? Many people whose business is dating things do use
>the year zero.
Interesting. Do you know of any historical events that occurred
during the year zero?
Have you a cite for anything dated to the year zero? I've never
seen one before.
Jerry Friedman
>
> > <snip>
> >> At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
> >> but it didn't take.
>
> > is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
> > accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
> > hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>
> > like Lord and Messiah and instead use the name of the man on whom
> > the system is based. We could have After Jesus and Before Jesus.
> > My system was devised primarily for use in Ireland, with Irish
> > pronunciation in mind. Many people pronounce the letter A as
>
> > That didn't take either.
>
James was just setting up his joke on the Irish expressions "Ah,
Jesus" and "Bejesus", I think.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
> On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:45:15 +0200, Bertel Lund Hansen
> >Don Phillipson skrev:
...
> >> zero has no ordinal adjective,
>
> >Oh?
>
> >http://hypography.com/forums/physics-and-mathematics/547-0-to-0th-pow...
>
> The phycicists do have a Zeroeth law of Thermodynamics.
Usually spelled "zeroth", in my experience.
--
Jerry Friedman
Peter Moylan
> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
Of course, those who didn't accept him as the Messiah didn't
accept a new calendar, either. If he wasn't the Messiah, but just
a naughty boy, there would be no point in restarting the calendar
in his honour.
But then, he conspicuously failed to drive out the Romans and
re-establish the state of Israel, so what were those calendar-makers
thinking? The prophecies weren't fulfilled until 1947-48, which
makes one suspect that a later Messiah was responsible.
I propose that we start a new dating system from that time. Let's
pick, say, 24 February 1948 as the origin for the new calendar.
The reasons for that precise date are left as an exercise for the
reader.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Peter Moylan
> ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) writes:
>> God never used a calendar, so what's all the fuss about?
>
> Of course he did. He even established it:
>
> The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This
> month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be
> the first of the months of the year for you. [Ex. 12:1-2]
>
> Of course that "for you" implies that not everybody was expected to
> use the same calendar.
Nor even to have the same god. I don't have the patience to search
through the sources, but it seems pretty clear that that particular
god only ever intended to be the god of one tribe.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Cheryl wrote:
>> James Hogg wrote:
>> > hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>> But the dating system itself isn't religiously neutral! That's why
>> BCE always seemed a bit silly to me - the abbreviation is changed,
>> but the dating system under it isn't in precisely the way that the
>> new abbreviation is suppposed to avoid.
>
> I think "Christian Era" was quite a reasonable way to describe the
> religious calendar without the religious bias of forcing
> non-Christians to call Jesus *dominus* or Christ. Changing it to
> "Common Era" is the part that doesn't make sense to me, as if
> Christian experience were common to everyone.
The problem is that "Christian Era" has two possible readings. The
one that makes sense is "the era that Christians defined". The one
that I suspect is more typical, however, is "the era characterized by
Christians being important". And for at least the first several
hundred years, they really weren't.
What's "common" about the "Common Era" is that it's the one we all
use. The Christian experience isn't common to everyone, but calling
this year 2009 pretty much is.
> Kofi Annan says I'm wrong, though: "People of all faiths have taken
> to using it simply as a matter of convenience. . . . And so the
> Christian Era has become the Common Era."
Personally, I don't have any problems with BC and AD. The historical
origin of the terms doesn't, to me, imply following a particular
religion any more than calling the first month "January" or one of the
days "Thursday".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There are just two rules of
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |governance in a free society: Mind
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |your own business. Keep your hands
|to yourself.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | P.J. O'Rourke
(650)857-7572
Maria Conlon
> Quoth the Omrud, and I quote:
>>At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>>but it didn't take.
>
> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>
> I too have tried introducing new abbreviations which avoid titles
> like Lord and Messiah and instead use the name of the man on whom
> the system is based. We could have After Jesus and Before Jesus.
> My system was devised primarily for use in Ireland, with Irish
> pronunciation in mind. Many people pronounce the letter A as
> "Ah", not "Ay", so the terms would be "Ah Jaysus" and Be Jaysus".
>
> That didn't take either.
Another couple of gems above. (I definitely chuckled.)
--
Maria Conlon
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Not only that. Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first
> year. Most people agree that he was born at least three years
> before that, and some put his birth as far back as 7 years B.C.
Your first sentence threw me there. Of course he was born at the
start of the first year. He was at least a couple of years old.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 16:21:51 +0000 (UTC), wol...@bimajority.org
> (Garrett Wollman) wrote:
>
>>In article <0vfq95pegknbrm5ti...@news.stofanet.dk>,
>>Bertel Lund Hansen <unos...@lundhansen.dk> wrote:
>>>1 has a unique property. It is unlike any other number. If you
>>>multiply a number with 1, the result is the same. I can find
>>>unique properties for any number you'd care to name.
>>
>>The rational numbers being a field, both 0 (the additive identity) and
>>1 (the multiplicative identity) have such a unique property.
>>
>>>> [Don Phillipson:]
>>>> Our chronology has no year zero:
>>>
>>>That is hardly a mathematical property but a special feature of
>>>our chronology.
>>
>>"Our" chronology? Many people whose business is dating things do use
>>the year zero.
>
> Interesting. Do you know of any historical events that occurred
> during the year zero?
>
> Have you a cite for anything dated to the year zero? I've never
> seen one before.
GoogleBooking for "year 0 ad" or "year ad 0" turns up a few
references. For example:
... the very small _arbitrary constant_, by which the epoch of
equinoctial time used differs from the real instant of the _mean_
vernal equinox in the year 0 (A.D.).
_The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical
Ephemeris for the Year 1829_
This growth averaged approximately 0.1% per year and brought
estimated world populations from 250 million in A.D. 0 to 750
million at the end of the dominantly agrarian period in 1750 ...
John Rogers and P. Geoffrey Feiss,
_People and the Earth_, 1998
Among national coin reverses, only some Greek motifs go further
back than Christian times, reconfirming that all other member
states agree to situate the birth of the European project around
the year 0 AD in the Roman empire ...
William Uricchio (ed), _We Europeans?_,
2003
By using a millennial time scale from the year AD 0 to the year
3000, the figure also conveys the sense that the age of fossil
fuels might pass in a relatively short time, compared to some
other historical time spans...
Francis Vanek and Louis Albright, _Energy
Systems Engineering_, 2008
I don't see any specific events spoken of as having taken place in 0
AD, but there are a number of books that use it as an endpoint of a
range.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |You gotta know when to code,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | Know when to log out,
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |Know when to single step,
| Know when you're through.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |You don't write your program
(650)857-7572 | When you're sittin' at the term'nal.
|There'll be time enough for writin'
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | When you're in the queue.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>> ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) writes:
>
>>> God never used a calendar, so what's all the fuss about?
>> Of course he did. He even established it:
>> The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This
>> month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be
>> the first of the months of the year for you. [Ex. 12:1-2]
>> Of course that "for you" implies that not everybody was expected to
>> use the same calendar.
>
> Nor even to have the same god. I don't have the patience to search
> through the sources, but it seems pretty clear that that particular
> god only ever intended to be the god of one tribe.
Sure. Monotheism of the "only one god exists" sort appears to first
show up in Isaiah (perhaps only in the "second" Isaiah"), which would
have been in the sixth century BC, during the Babylonian Exile.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If all else fails, embarrass the
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |industry into doing the right
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |thing.
| Dean Thompson
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> James Hogg wrote:
>
>> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
>> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
>> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
>> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>
> Of course, those who didn't accept him as the Messiah didn't
> accept a new calendar, either. If he wasn't the Messiah, but just
> a naughty boy, there would be no point in restarting the calendar
> in his honour.
>
> But then, he conspicuously failed to drive out the Romans and
> re-establish the state of Israel, so what were those calendar-makers
> thinking? The prophecies weren't fulfilled until 1947-48, which
> makes one suspect that a later Messiah was responsible.
>
> I propose that we start a new dating system from that time. Let's
> pick, say, 24 February 1948 as the origin for the new calendar.
> The reasons for that precise date are left as an exercise for the
> reader.
Many in the scientific community went a couple of years later,
resetting the epoch at 1 January 1950. The reasons for that precise
date are left as an exercise for the reader.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |barbarian and thinks that the
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |customs of his tribe and island are
|the laws of nature.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |
(650)857-7572 | George Bernard Shaw
Robert Bannister
> James Hogg wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>>> but it didn't take.
>>
>> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
>> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
>> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>>
>> like Lord and Messiah and instead use the name of the man on whom
>> the system is based. We could have After Jesus and Before Jesus.
>> My system was devised primarily for use in Ireland, with Irish
>> pronunciation in mind. Many people pronounce the letter A as
>> "Ah", not "Ay", so the terms would be "Ah Jaysus" and Be Jaysus".
>>
>> That didn't take either.
>>
> always seemed a bit silly to me - the abbreviation is changed, but the
> dating system under it isn't in precisely the way that the new
> abbreviation is suppposed to avoid.
>
> were understood as referring to dates rather than to a particular
> religion's way of calculating dates anyway. Changing the Official
> Initials doesn't seem to change anything, really, as far as I can see.
>
> Of course, I don't have a completely non-religious method of dating
> things to propose, either.
>
And since 1 AD is unlikely to be the year of Jesus' birth or death, it
doesn't matter anyway.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
BC: Before Calendar (as we know it).
AD: After (proper) Dates (began)
Actually, I've always wondered why AD is Latin and BC not, since more
people spoke Latin then, but since most people don't know what the
letters stand for anyway, what's it matter?
--
Rob Bannister
Peter Moylan
> John O'Flaherty wrote:
>> I don't think that's right. No mark at all might mean the condition of
>> someone who hasn't taken the test but will do so later. A zero score,
>> meaning all wrong answers, is a mark like any other.
>
> The distinction did not occur to the designers of our student records
> system. It is sometimes necessary to give a student one mark just for
> turning up to the exam. Failure to make the distinction can have large
> implications for the amount the UK government funds a university for
> teaching the student.
That's seriously unfair. In my experience, the student who didn't turn
up for the exam was the same one who spent several hours a week in
my office failing to understand the subject.
At the other extreme, the rare students who get 100% in exams cost
practically nothing to teach.
Robert Bannister
> Personally, I don't have any problems with BC and AD. The historical
> origin of the terms doesn't, to me, imply following a particular
> religion any more than calling the first month "January" or one of the
> days "Thursday".
>
Thank you for introducing an element of common sense.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
> On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:22:04 +0200, James Hogg <Jas....@gOUTmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Quoth the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com>, and I quote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>> At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>>> but it didn't take.
>> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
>> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
>> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
>>
>> like Lord and Messiah and instead use the name of the man on whom
>> the system is based. We could have After Jesus and Before Jesus.
>> My system was devised primarily for use in Ireland, with Irish
>> pronunciation in mind. Many people pronounce the letter A as
>> "Ah", not "Ay", so the terms would be "Ah Jaysus" and Be Jaysus".
>>
>> That didn't take either.
>
> Common Era) are used as secular alternatives to AD and BC.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era
>
How widely are they really used outside official documents? I have only
seen them myself in American writing. I don't doubt they are used in
Eurotalk as well, but I wonder whether the average man or woman in the
street is even aware of them.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
> James Hogg wrote:
>
>> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
>> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
>> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
>> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>
> Of course, those who didn't accept him as the Messiah didn't
> accept a new calendar, either. If he wasn't the Messiah, but just
> a naughty boy, there would be no point in restarting the calendar
> in his honour.
>
> But then, he conspicuously failed to drive out the Romans and
> re-establish the state of Israel, so what were those calendar-makers
> thinking? The prophecies weren't fulfilled until 1947-48, which
> makes one suspect that a later Messiah was responsible.
>
> I propose that we start a new dating system from that time. Let's
> pick, say, 24 February 1948 as the origin for the new calendar.
> The reasons for that precise date are left as an exercise for the
> reader.
>
Some time in what is now 45 BC would make more sense: the introduction
of the Julian calendar.
--
Rob Bannister
Bertel Lund Hansen
> > Not only that. Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first
> > year. Most people agree that he was born at least three years
> > before that, and some put his birth as far back as 7 years B.C.
> Your first sentence threw me there.
Okay, that is my non-native English thinking kicking in. How
would you say that he did not get born at that time?
> Of course he was born at the
> start of the first year. He was at least a couple of years old.
So he was born every year since then?
--
Bertel, Denmark
tony cooper
<mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>James Hogg wrote:
>> Quoth the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com>, and I quote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>> At school, I tried introducing an abbreviation of YOOL to replace AD,
>>> but it didn't take.
>>
>> The problem with Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini and Before Christ
>> is that they are not religiously neutral. Many people do not
>> accept Jesus as Lord or as the Messiah (Christ), which is why we
>> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>
>Not only clumsy, but factually inaccurate. I'm surprised nobody objected
>to BCE on the obvious grounds that it isn't common at all: it isn't
>common to anybody except those of Christian heritage. At least "BC" and
>"AD" were in widespread use, even if they implied a doctrine. I think we
>could do a lot worse than go back to dating from the traditional
>foundation of the city of Rome, lightly Gregorianized.
I thought BCE stands for "Before Current Era", not "common" era. I
have some Indian relics that are dated using "BP" (Before Present),
and the certified appraiser who dated them explained that UK
collectors might use the BCE term.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum skrev:
>
>> > Not only that. Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first
>> > year. Most people agree that he was born at least three years
>> > before that, and some put his birth as far back as 7 years B.C.
>
>> Your first sentence threw me there.
>
> Okay, that is my non-native English thinking kicking in. How
> would you say that he did not get born at that time?
I think I'd probably go with something like "It wasn't even the case
that Jesus's birth was at the start of the first year". Possibly "It
wasn't even the case that Jesus was born at the start of the first
year."
"X wasn't even born" at a particular time pretty much always means "X
is too young to have been alive at that time".
>> Of course he was born at the
>> start of the first year. He was at least a couple of years old.
>
> So he was born every year since then?
No, he just wasn't not born at the beginning of every year since.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The Elizabethans had so many words
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |for the female genitals that it is
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |quite hard to speak a sentence of
|modern English without inadvertently
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |mentioning at least three of them.
(650)857-7572 | Terry Pratchett
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>Peter Moylan writes:
>>
>>> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>>> ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) writes:
>>>
>>>>> God never used a calendar, so what's all the fuss about?
>>>> Of course he did. He even established it:
>>>> The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This
>>>> month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be
>>>> the first of the months of the year for you. [Ex. 12:1-2]
>>>> Of course that "for you" implies that not everybody was expected to
>>>> use the same calendar.
>>>
>>> Nor even to have the same god. I don't have the patience to search
>>> through the sources, but it seems pretty clear that that particular
>>> god only ever intended to be the god of one tribe.
>>
>>Sure. Monotheism of the "only one god exists" sort appears to first
>>show up in Isaiah (perhaps only in the "second" Isaiah"), which would
>>have been in the sixth century BC, during the Babylonian Exile.
>>
>
> Should Akhenaten be offended?
Well, in the context of that particular religion (and, in particular,
in that particular set of books). Atenism doesn't appear to have
caught on, though, so I suspect that Judaic monotheism was an
independent invention some 800 years later.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Now every hacker knows
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | That the secret to survivin'
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |Is knowin' when the time is free
| And what's the load and queue
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |'Cause everyone's a cruncher
(650)857-7572 | And everyone's a user
|And the best that you can hope for
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Is a crash when you're through
Jerry Friedman
> Bertel Lund Hansen <unosp...@lundhansen.dk> writes:
>
> > Evan Kirshenbaum skrev:
>
> >> > Not only that. Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first
> >> > year. Most people agree that he was born at least three years
> >> > before that, and some put his birth as far back as 7 years B.C.
>
> >> Your first sentence threw me there.
>
> > Okay, that is my non-native English thinking kicking in. How
> > would you say that he did not get born at that time?
>
> I think I'd probably go with something like "It wasn't even the case
> that Jesus's birth was at the start of the first year". Possibly "It
> wasn't even the case that Jesus was born at the start of the first
> year."
Maybe "The start of the first year wasn't even the time of Jesus's
birth." Of course you can totally recast: "That isn't even the right
year."
> "X wasn't even born" at a particular time pretty much always means "X
> is too young to have been alive at that time".
Contrast, though, "I wasn't born yesterday."
> >> Of course he was born at the
> >> start of the first year. He was at least a couple of years old.
>
> > So he was born every year since then?
>
> No, he just wasn't not born at the beginning of every year since.
Cruel, Evan.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
> Mike Page wrote:
> > John O'Flaherty wrote:
> >> I don't think that's right. No mark at all might mean the condition of
> >> someone who hasn't taken the test but will do so later. A zero score,
> >> meaning all wrong answers, is a mark like any other.
>
> > The distinction did not occur to the designers of our student records
> > system. It is sometimes necessary to give a student one mark just for
> > turning up to the exam. Failure to make the distinction can have large
> > implications for the amount the UK government funds a university for
> > teaching the student.
>
> That's seriously unfair. In my experience, the student who didn't turn
> up for the exam was the same one who spent several hours a week in
> my office failing to understand the subject.
>
> At the other extreme, the rare students who get 100% in exams cost
> practically nothing to teach.
Strikingly different from my experience. Probably the majority of the
students who've gotten over 95% on tests got help from me or the
tutors every week, while the students who don't show up for the final
(which is rare) have varied from attending irregularly to never
attending a single class, but haven't varied in their lack of interest
in getting help. I don't think I've ever had a student who showed up
to anything in the last few weeks but not to the final.
The difference in the 100% students may be that your students who do
that have a great deal of ability and confidence, so they go straight
to universities instead of to community colleges such as my employer.
I can't even guess about the difference in the students who ditch the
final, except that in one of our two countries, everything is upside-
down.
--
Jerry Friedman
James Hogg
I'll remember that if I ever get into an argument with
a Common Era fanatic.
Thanks, Evan
--
James
James Hogg
For archaeologists, BP means before 1950.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
--
James
Mark Brader
> > sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
> > Just to annoy me, as far as I can tell.
Glenn Knickerbocker:
> It's for pronounceability (and legibility when the top bar is left off
> the square root sign). If you say "two eye radical three," there's no
> question of what you mean. ...
"Two eye root three".
--
Mark Brader "Just because the standard provides a cliff in
Toronto front of you, you are not necessarily required
m...@vex.net to jump off it." -- Norman Diamond
Mark Brader
>>> Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first year [1 AD].
>>> Most people agree that he was born at least three years before that...
Evan Kirshenbaum:
>> Your first sentence threw me there. Of course he was born at the
>> start of the first year. He was at least a couple of years old.
Whoa!
Bertel Hansen:
> Okay, that is my non-native English thinking kicking in.
No it isn't. I say Evan is talking like a non-native speaker.
For the sense to be the one that Evan is talking about, the past
perfect tense would be required. "Jesus hadn't even been born."
..."Of course he'd been born."
--
Mark Brader | "...the scholarly instructor whisked his pupils through the
Toronto | entire universe in five months. Of course, the universe
m...@vex.net | was much smaller in those days." --John Franch
My text in this article is in the public domain.
R H Draney
>
>Bertel Hansen:
>>>> Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first year [1 AD].
>>>> Most people agree that he was born at least three years before that...
>
>Evan Kirshenbaum:
>>> Your first sentence threw me there. Of course he was born at the
>>> start of the first year. He was at least a couple of years old.
>
>Whoa!
>
>Bertel Hansen:
>> Okay, that is my non-native English thinking kicking in.
>
>No it isn't. I say Evan is talking like a non-native speaker.
>For the sense to be the one that Evan is talking about, the past
>perfect tense would be required. "Jesus hadn't even been born."
>..."Of course he'd been born."
Clearly, being born is like being deleted, at least in a grammatical sense....
(ObMovieQuote:
Kat: "What's dying like?"
Casper: "Like being born. Only in reverse.")
....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
Ian Noble
<use...@larseighner.com> wrote:
>In our last episode, <055q959bcqbi99f4d...@news.stofanet.dk>,
>the lovely and talented Bertel Lund Hansen broadcast on alt.usage.english:
>
>> Cheryl skrev:
>
>>> Zero points.
>
>>> It doesn't seem very logical, though, does it? But then, English isn't
>>> very logical.
>
>> I think it is. In fact I don't buy the notion that languages are
>> illogical. It is just not always that the obvious 'logic' is the
>> right one.
>
>> Danish, German and French also use plural with "zero" when
>> talking about a number.
>
>It seems to me when "zero" does mean "zero" no unit should be used at all.
>0 apples is the same a 0 oranges.
True up to a point, but singularly useless...
OK - having got that out of my system... try convincing your wife of
that:
"Darling, what fruit do we have left?"
"Well, we've two apples, but zero, zero and zero."
"Guess who's sleeping on the couch tonight?"
Cheers - Ian
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Bertel Hansen:
>>>> Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first year [1 AD].
>>>> Most people agree that he was born at least three years before
>>>> that...
>
> Evan Kirshenbaum:
>>> Your first sentence threw me there. Of course he was born at the
>>> start of the first year. He was at least a couple of years old.
>
> Whoa!
>
> Bertel Hansen:
>> Okay, that is my non-native English thinking kicking in.
>
> No it isn't. I say Evan is talking like a non-native speaker.
Perhaps for your dialect.
> For the sense to be the one that Evan is talking about, the past
> perfect tense would be required. "Jesus hadn't even been born."
> ..."Of course he'd been born."
So you wouldn't expect the following exchange?
A: Remember when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show?
B: I wasn't even born then.
"I hadn't even been born then" sounds a bit formal to me.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |A little government and a little luck
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |are necessary in life, but only a
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |fool trusts either of them.
| P.J. O'Rourke
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Mark Brader
> So you wouldn't expect the following exchange?
>
> A: Remember when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show?
> B: I wasn't even born then.
I'd say it sounds about as ignorant as "ain't" does -- and perhaps
represents the same sort of simplification that will one day be
standard.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | sed -e "s;??\\([-=(/)'<!>]\\);?\\\\?\\1;g"
m...@vex.net | will fix them... -- Karl Heuer
Nick Spalding
on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:21:46 -0400:
BP is the sort of date that radio-carbon dating gives you. The problem
with using it to label something is that it immediately starts becoming
incorrect.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Evan Kirshenbaum
> BP is the sort of date that radio-carbon dating gives you. The
> problem with using it to label something is that it immediately
> starts becoming incorrect.
It does not. It's an absoluted date, the number of years before 1950.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |You may hate gravity, but gravity
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |doesn't care.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | Clayton Christensen
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
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"Bertel Lund Hansen" <unos...@lundhansen.dk> wrote in message
news:5d6r9517u853oll93...@news.stofanet.dk...
> Garrett Wollman skrev:
>
>> >That is hardly a mathematical property but a special feature of
>> >our chronology.
>
>> "Our" chronology?
>
> Okay, our ... eh, the official christian calendar of today then.
>
> --
> Bertel, Denmark
Jerry Friedman
> Jerry Friedman wrote:
> > sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
> > Just to annoy me, as far as I can tell.
>
> the square root sign).
These books, fortunately, don't leave that bar off.
> If you say "two eye radical three," there's no
> question of what you mean.
I say "two i square root of three", or "two i root three" as Mark
Brader does if I think my interlocutor will understand it, but some of
my students have learned "radical".
> "Two radical three eye," on the other hand,
> might leave the listener wondering whether you meant 2 i sqrt(3) or
> (i+1) sqrt(6).
That sounds reasonable. Thanks.
The second possibility is less likely, especially in an answer, which
is where these forms show up, but where there'd be doubt, you can say,
"two root three times i". Tone of voice can also help.
--
Jerry Friedman
tony cooper
wrote:
>Quoth tony cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net>, and I quote:
When the artifact being dated was made somewhere between 13,000 to
15,000 years-ago, fifty to sixty years is a blink of an eye.
Peter Moylan
> On Sep 1, 2:06 pm, Glenn Knickerbocker <N...@bestweb.net> wrote:
>> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>> sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
>>> Just to annoy me, as far as I can tell.
>> It's for pronounceability (and legibility when the top bar is left off
>> the square root sign).
>
> These books, fortunately, don't leave that bar off.
>
>> If you say "two eye radical three," there's no
>> question of what you mean.
>
> I say "two i square root of three", or "two i root three" as Mark
> Brader does if I think my interlocutor will understand it, but some of
> my students have learned "radical".
Do they also say "radical" for a cube root? If so, how do they
disambiguate?
Chuck Riggs
<use...@larseighner.com> wrote:
>In our last episode, <055q959bcqbi99f4d...@news.stofanet.dk>,
>the lovely and talented Bertel Lund Hansen broadcast on alt.usage.english:
>
>> Cheryl skrev:
>
>>> Zero points.
>
>>> It doesn't seem very logical, though, does it? But then, English isn't
>>> very logical.
>
>> I think it is. In fact I don't buy the notion that languages are
>> illogical. It is just not always that the obvious 'logic' is the
>> right one.
>
>> Danish, German and French also use plural with "zero" when
>> talking about a number.
>
>It seems to me when "zero" does mean "zero" no unit should be used at all.
>0 apples is the same a 0 oranges. Of course in many temperature scales,
>latitude, longitude, and so forth, "zero" does not really mean "zero."
In mathematics for the physical world, I was taught to make a clear
distinction between a quantity and what is being measured. Zero, -1.3,
� and SQRT(3), for example, are quantities that can be applied to
apples, oranges and any number of other things.
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs,
who speaks AmE, lives near Dublin, Ireland
and usually spells in BrE
Bertel Lund Hansen
> In mathematics for the physical world, I was taught to make a clear
> distinction between a quantity and what is being measured. Zero, -1.3,
> � and SQRT(3), for example, are quantities that can be applied to
> apples, oranges and any number of other things.
That is a Good Thing (tm), but it does not imply that one can't
use zero (or any other number) with a unit name.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Bertel Lund Hansen
> 0 apples is the same a 0 oranges. Of course in many temperature scales,
> latitude, longitude, and so forth, "zero" does not really mean "zero."
Of course not. And "one" does not mean "one" and so forth. The
whole thing is meaningless.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Lanarcam
There is a case where zero must be used with the unit name, that
is the case of zero Ohms resistors in electronics. The fact is that
the resistance is in fact not strictly equal to zero but is a very
small quantity and thus zero Ohms makes sense even if you might
wonder why such resistors are used at all.
Chuck Riggs
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) writes:
>
>> Bertel Hansen:
>>>>> Jesus wasn't even born at the start of the first year [1 AD].
>>>>> Most people agree that he was born at least three years before
>>>>> that...
>>
>> Evan Kirshenbaum:
>>>> Your first sentence threw me there. Of course he was born at the
>>>> start of the first year. He was at least a couple of years old.
>>
>> Whoa!
>>
>> Bertel Hansen:
>>> Okay, that is my non-native English thinking kicking in.
>>
>> No it isn't. I say Evan is talking like a non-native speaker.
>
>Perhaps for your dialect.
>
>> For the sense to be the one that Evan is talking about, the past
>> perfect tense would be required. "Jesus hadn't even been born."
>> ..."Of course he'd been born."
>
>So you wouldn't expect the following exchange?
>
> A: Remember when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show?
> B: I wasn't even born then.
>
>"I hadn't even been born then" sounds a bit formal to me.
True, but the various alternatives I can think of are no less formal.
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>Glenn Knickerbocker wrote:
>> Cheryl wrote:
>>> James Hogg wrote:
>>>> hear clumsy expressions like Before the Common Era.
>>> But the dating system itself isn't religiously neutral! That's why BCE
>>> always seemed a bit silly to me - the abbreviation is changed, but the
>>> dating system under it isn't in precisely the way that the new
>>> abbreviation is suppposed to avoid.
>>
>> I think "Christian Era" was quite a reasonable way to describe the
>> religious calendar without the religious bias of forcing non-Christians
>> to call Jesus *dominus* or Christ. Changing it to "Common Era" is the
>> part that doesn't make sense to me, as if Christian experience were
>> common to everyone. Kofi Annan says I'm wrong, though: "People of all
>> faiths have taken to using it simply as a matter of convenience. . . .
>> And so the Christian Era has become the Common Era."
>
>BC: Before Calendar (as we know it).
>AD: After (proper) Dates (began)
>
>Actually, I've always wondered why AD is Latin and BC not, since more
>people spoke Latin then, but since most people don't know what the
>letters stand for anyway, what's it matter?
BC is a translation of the Latin "Ante Christum".
I was wondering why the initials AC have not been used. At a quick
glance there don't appear to have been any conflicting uses of AC. Then
I realised that the problem might not be with the initials but with the
phrase in full:
"Ante Christum" of dates.
"Antechristus" the Antichrist.
A bit too close for comfort, perhaps.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Jerry Friedman
> Jerry Friedman wrote:
> > On Sep 1, 2:06 pm, Glenn Knickerbocker <N...@bestweb.net> wrote:
> >> Jerry Friedman wrote:
> >>> sqrt(-12) = 2 i sqrt(3).
> >>> Just to annoy me, as far as I can tell.
> >> It's for pronounceability (and legibility when the top bar is left off
> >> the square root sign).
>
> > These books, fortunately, don't leave that bar off.
>
> >> If you say "two eye radical three," there's no
> >> question of what you mean.
>
> > I say "two i square root of three", or "two i root three" as Mark
> > Brader does if I think my interlocutor will understand it, but some of
> > my students have learned "radical".
>
> Do they also say "radical" for a cube root?
Nope. I do occasionally hint to some students, not necessarily the
same ones, that it's "cube root", not "cubed root". (If anyone's
wondering--no, I don't recall hearing "squared root".)
> If so, how do they disambiguate?
--
Jerry Friedman
Nick Spalding
on Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:10:09 -0700:
> Nick Spalding <spal...@iol.ie> writes:
>
> > BP is the sort of date that radio-carbon dating gives you. The
> > problem with using it to label something is that it immediately
> > starts becoming incorrect.
>
> It does not. It's an absoluted date, the number of years before 1950.
So I now realise from several other posts. Is it in fact much used for
dates which can be accurately determined in a BC/AD framework?
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Bertel Lund Hansen
> is the case of zero Ohms resistors in electronics. The fact is that
> the resistance is in fact not strictly equal to zero but is a very
> small quantity and thus zero Ohms makes sense even if you might
> wonder why such resistors are used at all.
In superconductors the resistance is zero Ohm - precisely.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Hatunen
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 16:21:51 +0000 (UTC), wol...@bimajority.org
>> (Garrett Wollman) wrote:
>>
>>>In article <0vfq95pegknbrm5ti...@news.stofanet.dk>,
>>>Bertel Lund Hansen <unos...@lundhansen.dk> wrote:
>>>>1 has a unique property. It is unlike any other number. If you
>>>>multiply a number with 1, the result is the same. I can find
>>>>unique properties for any number you'd care to name.
>>>
>>>The rational numbers being a field, both 0 (the additive identity) and
>>>1 (the multiplicative identity) have such a unique property.
>>>
>>>>> [Don Phillipson:]
>>>>> Our chronology has no year zero:
>>>>
>>>>That is hardly a mathematical property but a special feature of
>>>>our chronology.
>>>
>>>"Our" chronology? Many people whose business is dating things do use
>>>the year zero.
>>
>> Interesting. Do you know of any historical events that occurred
>> during the year zero?
>>
>> Have you a cite for anything dated to the year zero? I've never
>> seen one before.
>
>GoogleBooking for "year 0 ad" or "year ad 0" turns up a few
>references. For example:
>
> ... the very small _arbitrary constant_, by which the epoch of
> equinoctial time used differs from the real instant of the _mean_
> vernal equinox in the year 0 (A.D.).
>
> _The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical
> Ephemeris for the Year 1829_
Interesting. So is the year 0 AD or BC, or is there a year 0 AD
and a year 0 BC?
> This growth averaged approximately 0.1% per year and brought
> estimated world populations from 250 million in A.D. 0 to 750
> million at the end of the dominantly agrarian period in 1750 ...
This doesn't refer to an event in the year 0.
>
> John Rogers and P. Geoffrey Feiss,
> _People and the Earth_, 1998
>
> Among national coin reverses, only some Greek motifs go further
> back than Christian times, reconfirming that all other member
> states agree to situate the birth of the European project around
> the year 0 AD in the Roman empire ...
>
> William Uricchio (ed), _We Europeans?_,
> 2003
That is not citing an event in the year 0, but something around
the time when BC becomes AD.
> By using a millennial time scale from the year AD 0 to the year
> 3000, the figure also conveys the sense that the age of fossil
> fuels might pass in a relatively short time, compared to some
> other historical time spans...
>
> Francis Vanek and Louis Albright, _Energy
> Systems Engineering_, 2008
Nor does that describe an actual event in a year 0.
>
>I don't see any specific events spoken of as having taken place in 0
>AD, but there are a number of books that use it as an endpoint of a
>range.
That's not what I asked.
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Hatunen
wrote:
In my teenage years as a ham radio licensee I can't recall any
manufactured resistors rated zero resistance. I'm not sure who
would buy one rather than using a piece of wire.