Talk:Orders of magnitude (numbers)

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[edit] Moser's number

Can someone who knows change this part? The entry is currently ridiculous. Hash2o (talk) 22:06, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dimensionless numbers

I believe the entries for the Planck time, length and mass are out of place here, since the page is about dimensionless quantities. These belong on Orders of magnitude (time), Orders of magnitude (length) and Orders of magnitude (mass), respectively (some are already there). The ones concerning storage amounts probably shouldn't be here either (Orders of magnitude (data)), but I'm less concerned about those since they're related to counts of number of bits. - dcljr 10:15, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Agreed Ian Cairns 10:56, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
removed --PhiJ 14:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
User:The Anome added many entries with dimensions today. [1] I think they should be removed per this discussion and the article introduction which should be changed otherwise. PrimeHunter 15:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the entries that are not dimensionless (diff). PrimeHunter 12:38, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rowlett

I suggest deleting the Rowlett number information, since this system is only a proposed system. The long scale and short scale systems have centuries of historical usage, and are in widespread actual usage. If anyone can indicate when Rowlett will be accepted by which authority for which userbase, please look at Talk:Rowlett. Thanks, Ian Cairns 20:42, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Can anyone answer the question "What has to happen before the Rowlett system is ready to discontinue its description as "proposed"??" 66.245.108.17 15:12, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Another question to try: Anything that has been proposed for at least 20 years but still "proposed"?? 66.245.108.17 15:18, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Remove trivia?

I think a number of irrelevant items have made it onto this page. The purpose of the page must be to facilitate comparison of small and large numbers by their order of magnitude. I therefore think the following items (or at least the bold ones) should be removed (possibly moving the material to the relevant "nn (number)" article, or the like):

  • Most (but not all) of the probability entries ("Math - Poker", "Math - Lottery")
  • BioMed - HIV: About 1.2% of all 15-49 year-old humans were infected with HIV at the end of 2001
  • Math: φ ≈ 1.618034, the golden ratio
  • Sport: In Olympic basketball, the roster limit for a team is 12 (and they are limited to wearing numbers 4 through 15).
  • Sport: In NCAA basketball, players are not to wear digits above 5, and they are limited to one or two digits, making 42 distinct combinations (although 01, 02, 03, 04, and 05 typically aren't used). Since the roster limit is typically around 12, this doesn't present that much of a problem.
  • Lit: 42, The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
  • Sport: In North American professional sports, players typically wear uniform numbers from 1 to 99. In some sports, 0 and 00 are also allowed, making 101 different combinations.
  • Pol: There are 100 Senators in the United States Senate.
  • Lit: 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the ignition temperature of paper. Therefore, Ray Bradbury titled his dystopian novel about book burnings Fahrenheit 451 (not dimensionless)
  • Geo: 338,200 population of the London Borough of Croydon in 1998
  • Math: 2,147,483,647 is a Mersenne prime and a Zsigmondy number

--Niels Ø 21:12, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed at least the Pol, Sport and Geo bits. There are just too many houses of parliment; far too many sports and absurdly far too many towns, cities, countries, boroughs, etc. to include them all. Why include some and not others? There can be no sensible reason ... except, where the number is interesting in itself, for example, the populations of China or India being the two greatest in the World. I have removed the following.
Jimp 04:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Surely it makes sense to include mathematical and scientific figures only, as these come about naturally. The others are "man-made" and so are, effectively, arbitrary. There could just as well be 10 or 1000 senators in the US Senate if the political system were configured differently. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul G (talk • contribs) 12:34, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No rounding?

I notice in this list that the (for lack of a better word) "layman's" method for determining OOM — i.e., just counting the place of the most-significant digit — is used.

The mathematically correct method is to round up at the square root of 10, or approximately 3.16. The usual compromise is to just round up from 3 (this only introduces a few percent error). So, for instance, to pick an OOM as an example:

100
(1; one)

the last two would more appropriately go into the 101 section (and, if you use the up-from-3 compromise, π should as well). Is there a reason for doing this page in the count-the-digits style rather than using the true OOM? --TreyHarris 5 July 2005 21:37 (UTC)

Rounding down, which is equivalent in this case to using the number of digits in the numbers, is probably simplest for the layperson to understand, hence the use of the "layman's" method. Putting (say) 4 in 101 would look wrong to a lot more people than would putting it in the lower category. — —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul G (talk • contribs) 12:32, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Values needing power of ten equivalent

The following values should have a power of ten equivalent to allow comparison with other values on the page:

—Doug Bell talk•contrib 16:33, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Huh??

The quote regarding human bacteria is quoted as both 1014 and 1015 can someone confirm which it is and edit accordingly??

Many thanks,

Aurelius —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.6.161.161 (talk) 21:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC).

Huh?? The article says 10^12 bacteria on the body (surface), 10^14 cells in the body, 10^15 bacteria in the body. 3 different things are counted, so I see no need for editing. PrimeHunter 03:23, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

So for each 100 cells in your solid, 3-D body, there is a bacterial cell on the 2D surface of your skin? I don't think so!
Sys Hax 05:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

And there are 10 times as many bacterial cells in a few pounds of guts as there are cells in your 200-pound body? Sorry, nope!
Sys Hax 05:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know the correct counts. I just commented that the article didn't claim different numbers for the same thing, which is what Aurelius said. PrimeHunter 12:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh no! I wasn't challenging your quite-correct observation, I was adding to it, my point being that there are all KINDS of suspect suspiciousnesses in this article!! Here's another one:

And on earth, there are only 1,000 times more ATOMS of rock than there are MOLECULES of water? The earth is a sphere 8,000 miles thick, and only the outermost 4 miles is water. Bullshit! Particularly since most of that rock and iron is at a pressure making it orders of magnitude denser than water!
Sys Hax 05:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Avogadro's number

While often seen as dimensionless, Avogadro's number is only meaningful in the context of the International System of Units (gram or litre). In a stricter sense, it has SI units of mol−1. Does it really belong here? Owen× ☎ 20:55, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitrary sequence members

The following current entries in the list appear to be rather arbitrary members of long or infinite sequences. They are not the largest, smallest, unique, or otherwise special of something as far as I know. I suggest to remove them. I don't think their order of magnitude says something relevant for this list. Some of them can be replaced by the largest known number of their kind (already listed in some cases).

  • Mathematics: 10-12 Roughly the chances of getting heads 40 times in a row on a fair coin.
  • Mathematics: 365,596 solutions to n-Queens Problem for n = 14
  • Mathematics - Chess: There are 2 279 184 solutions to n-Queens Problem for n = 15
  • Mathematics: 14,772,512 solutions to n-Queens Problem for n = 16
  • Mathematics: 95,815,104 solutions to n-Queens Problem for n = 17
  • Mathematics: 2,147,483,647 is a Mersenne prime.
  • Mathematics: 27,704,267,971 and 27,704,267,977 are sexy primes.
  • Mathematics: 258,584,046,368 is the number of domino tilings of a 10×10 checkerboard.
  • Mathematics: 53,060,477,521,960,000 is the number of domino tilings of a 12×12 checkerboard.
  • Mathematics: 2,305,843,009,213,693,951 (261-1) is a Mersenne prime
  • Mathematics: 2,833,419,889,721,787,128,217,599 (≈2.8×1025) is a Woodall prime.
  • Mathematics: 2,444,888,770,250,892,795,802,079,170,816 is the number of domino tilings of a 16×16 checkerboard.
  • Mathematics: 1,298,074,214,633,706,835,075,030,044,377,087 (≈1.3×1034) is a Carol prime
  • Mathematics: 548,943,583,215,388,338,077,567,813,208,427,340,288 is the number of domino tilings of a 18×18 checkerboard.
  • Mathematics: 53,694,226,297,143,959,644,031,344,050,777,763,036,004,353 (≈5.4×1044) is a Pierpont prime
  • Mathematics: 393,050,634,124,102,232,869,567,034,555,427,371,542,904,833 (≈3.9×1045) is a Cullen prime
  • Mathematics: 359,334,085,968,622,831,041,960,188,598,043,661,065,388,726,959,079,837 (≈3.6×1054) is a prime Bell number
  • Mathematics: 475,420,437,734,698,220,747,368,027,166,749,382,927,701,417,016,557,193,662,268,716,376,935,476,241 (≈4.8×1072) is a Fibonacci prime

Any comments? PrimeHunter 23:03, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I love primes, and I don't have anything against chess or checkers, so I suggest these two additions:

Since the games are actually played on 8x8 boards, these are special values (although 92 may be too small to be interesting). PrimeHunter 00:01, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree, as long as it doesn't leave a section empty. If an arbitrary Carol prime number is the only example we have for 1033 to 1036, we may as well leave it there. Owen× ☎ 01:40, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
OK. I will try to come up with a more interesting property in that interval. The approximate chance of 40 heads in a row is the only entry for 10-12 (except for pico which is not bulleted), and many other negative exponents have no entry. PrimeHunter 02:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scrabble

The claim made under "Larger than 10100" about arrangements of Scrabble tiles omits to mention whether:

  • each of the arrangements consists solely of valid words
  • each of the the arrangements is connected — if you put 50 of the tiles in the first four rows and the other 50 in the bottom four rows, then you don't have a valid arrangement of tiles irrespective of whether or not the horizontal and vertical runs of tiles spell valid words.

The first is obviously highly unlikely, because the number of arrangements consisting of valid words isn't neatly expressible using factorials. Whether or not the second is intended is less clear. I think these points should be mentioned, perhaps with a (brief, if possible) explanation of where the quotient of factorials comes from. — Paul G 12:28, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BREAK!

This article is not too long KB wise but has far too many sections which should be individual articles. It is very hard to even follow this not to mention not everyone gets the scientific notation. -- Cat chi? 21:14, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the content should be split, but the lead should probably explain the scientific notation before the TOC. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:41, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] XONA?

They(the scientists) adopted the prefix xona-? I am truly vexed by this, that is impossible, it is not in the news. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.246.250.63 (talk) 00:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

xona and xonto were added to the article by 90.196.175.198 during a sequence of edits.[2] The IP has no other edits than this article around that time. According to SI prefix#Extension, xenta (not xonto) and xona have been proposed among others. I have not found support for the ISO claim by 90.196.175.198. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
The new account HPsiEPsi replaced them [3] with "theta" and "theto" which I'm also unable to confirm. I have removed them [4] without restoring "xona" and "xonto". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Planets and dwarf planets

Changed "Astronomy: 8 planets in the solar system" to "Astronomy: 8 Non Dwarf planets in the solar system" Since there is no Distinct name for a Planet vs Dwarf planet. This is to add the idea of size/catigorization since there are more then 8 planets of some kind in our solar system. Mementh (talk) 22:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Including wikilinks, you changed "8 planets in the solar system" to "8 Non Dwarf planets in the solar system". I have reverted [5] to the version which links correctly to planet. That article explains there are 8 planets. Dwarf planets are not planets and I don't think they should be linked instead of planets in an entry about planets. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:09, 31 May 2008 (UTC)