From BestATN@aol.com Fri Oct 18 15:41:09 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: BestATN@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_2_1); 18 Oct 2002 22:41:09 -0000 Received: (qmail 77798 invoked from network); 18 Oct 2002 22:41:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217) by m12.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 18 Oct 2002 22:41:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-m07.mx.aol.com) (64.12.136.162) by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 18 Oct 2002 22:41:07 -0000 Received: from BestATN@aol.com by imo-m07.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v34.13.) id r.14c.16145b6b (4446) for ; Fri, 18 Oct 2002 18:41:04 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <14c.16145b6b.2ae1e800@aol.com> Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 18:41:04 EDT Subject: numeric magnitude with "gei" To: lojban@yahoogroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 7.0 for Windows US sub 10637 From: BestATN@aol.com X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1155066 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojbaner Digest Number 37 Message: 1 Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 21:08:09 +0100 From: "And Rosta" Subject: ji'i (was: RE: [lojban] Re: Usage deciding Xorxes: >...My problem with ji'i is its > disruptive infixation. I don't believe it will be used as > defined anyway, as it makes parsing numbers too hard. But given > the outcry against {reji'ici} I will change to something like > {ji'ireso'uci} for example, which is impeccably CLL. Given the general way that the number grammar works, how would you show the number of significant figures, or the portion of a number that is approximate? The official method with ji'i seems a good solution, and your objection to it seems really to be a more general objection that the overally magnitude of a number cannot be apprehended until the entire number has been parsed. Maybe a cmavo to show that the number is to be read with the digits in increasing order of magnitude would solve that problem. --And. Digest Number 38 Message: 2 Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 09:17:18 -0400 From: Robert LeChevalier Subject: Re: a number's magnitude At 08:52 AM 10/14/02 -0400, bestatn@aol.com wrote: >In a message dated 2002-10-14 8:11:34 AM Eastern Daylight Time, >jboske@yahoogroups.com writes: >And to xorxes (i think): >>your >>objection to it seems really to be a more general objection that >>the overally magnitude of a number cannot be apprehended until >>the entire number has been parsed. > > >this has been one of my objections to loglan's/lojban's number system all >along, back before i even knew about lojban. i still don't like it. (not >a complaint to you; rather, thanks for pointing out so concisely what's >been bugging me for so long.) Science came up with exponential notation to solve this problem, and we made sure to cover it. You can either do pure scientific notation, which uses MEX, or you can use Fortran notation, which is a string of mixed numbers and letters. papireci ebuma'umu = 1.23E+5 = 123000 (Lojban purists might use ty for tenfa instead of ebu for exponential, but the latter is Fortran standard. I've also seen forms of exponential notation that elide the plus as a default and only list a minus if one is needed.) lojbab Digest Number 39 Message: 1 Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 09:18:36 EDT From: bestatn@aol.com Subject: magnitude lojbab, yes, of course, lojban can use scientific notation to mark the magnitude of a number, but the standard way of saying a number in lojban is to read off the digits, which does not mark the magnitude at all, until the whole number has been read. saying "hundred" or "million" is an indicator of the magnitude, and lojban has no normal equivalent for these. steven New: I now believe that "gei" (CLL 18.14, pp. 451-452) pretty much answers my objections. lojbab, is this the MEX you were referring to? On the use of "gei": Is a googolplex [i.e., 10 * (10 * 100)] = gei gei gei re? Steven