Proposal for an Improved Scientific Notation

I was gratified by the enthusiasm with which my
proposal for a vastly simplified system of units of
measure was embraced by the visionaries within
sci.physics. If you missed it, it can still be
found here:

http://www.geocities.com/donaldsauter/units.htm

That proposal works hand-in-hand with one for an
improved scientific notation. Since there are so
many billions of web pages out there, and the
proposal is not very long, I thought I would make
it easier to find by putting it up here in
sci.physics.

Thanks for your consideration.

Donald Sauter

NOTE: This article must be viewed in a FIXED-WIDTH
FONT.

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Proposal for an Improved Scientific Notation


Scientific notation is a way of expressing very
large and very small numbers in a reasonably
concise manner. I'm presuming you're familiar with
it. (It'd be pretty weird for you to be reading up
on how to improve something you don't even know
about!)

Scientific notation is less than ideal for the
following reasons: it's cumbersome to say,
cumbersome to write, and has always been and still
is impossible to type on a keyboard. Hard to
imagine who thought it up... It's no wonder that
it never caught on with the masses. Which is a
shame.

I argue in my proposal for a fantastically
simplified system of units of measure that we would
surely gain a better feel for how things in nature
compare if we always measured the same property
using the same unit - all the way from the size of
an atom to the size of a cell to the size of a
person to the size of the earth... to the size of
the universe.

To do that, we need to be perfectly comfortable
with big and small numbers.

To be fair, I should have conceded above that the
basic idea of scientific notation is great - using
powers of ten in expressing large and small
numbers. It's just that the written notation and
the spoken words associated with it are a total
pain in the neck.

Where there's a problem, I always say, there's a
solution. And most of the time the statement of
the problem practically cries its own solution.

In this case, all that's needed is a simple
character and a simple syllable to stand for the
"times ten to the plus" and "times ten to the
minus" folderol of scientific notation.

The final decision on clear and efficient
characters and syllables can be left to a panel of
clever people, but here are some suggestions to get
the ball rolling. How about an overscore and an
underscore to indicate "times 10 to the (plus)" and
"times 10 to the minus", respectively? It would
look like this:

_
In with the NEW: 4 7 5_6 (Yaaayy!!!)

7 -6
Out with the OLD: 4x10 5x10 (Booooo...)

If over- and underscores have uses at all, I can't
think of what they are or how they might create
confusion with this notation. But there certainly
may be better ideas for the new symbols.

Next we need a simple syllable for each case of
positive and negative powers of ten. For years
I've been thinking "bip" for "times ten to the
plus", and "bop" for "times ten to the minus". I'm
sure that can be improved upon. Sounds like a
kid's song. ("I never knew just what it was, and I
guess I never will...")


The NEW rap The OLD song and dance
-------------- ----------------------------------
Four bip seven. Four times ten to the (plus) seven.
Five bop six. Five times ten to the minus 6.

Scientific notation requires the placement of a
decimal point after the first digit. For this
streamlined notation, perhaps we might feel freer
to choose a power of 10 so that the leading factor
is a simple one- to three-digit integer, and
dispense with the fly specks. Notice how often two
digits provide more than enough precision for our
needs. Does anybody really care if someone has
6.37 million dollars, as opposed 6.4 (or just 6)
million dollars?

In our streamlined scientific notation we can
express every number from .000000010 to 99000000000
to two-place precision with four strokes of
the pencil or less.

-8 10
That was THEN: 1.0x10 9.9x10 (Blechhh!)

_
This is NOW: 10_9 99 9 (Ahhhh...)

Pretty impressive, eh? Notice how the old
scientific notation represents a savings of a mere
2 characters for the small number, and a mere 3
characters for the large one. Admittedly, it saved
us the trouble of counting up the zeros.

To conclude: the streamlined notation and talk
would bring acceptance of scientific notation to
the media and the masses, and the benefits would be
substantial. We might have to add a character or
two to our keyboards, but that shouldn't hold us
up. When we switch over to the simplified system
of units, a simple and efficient way of expressing
large and small numbers will be mandatory.

Of course, everything here applies just as well to
other number systems, looking ahead to when we
switch over from clumsy old Base 10 to Base 8. See
my proposal for that at

http://www.geocities.com/donaldsauter/base8.htm

.

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