There is a bit of a tradeoff if the notation aims to transmit the idea of measurement error.
I would read “700e6” as saying that there were three digits of presumed accuracy in the measurement, and “50e3″ as claiming only two digits of confidence in the precision.
If I knew that both were actually a measurement with a mere one part in ten of accuracy, and I was going to bodge the numeric representation for verbal convenience like this, it would give my soul a twinge of pain.
Also, if I’m gonna bodge my symbols to show how sloppy I’m being, like in text, I’d probably write 50k and 700M (pronounced “fifty kay” and “seven hundred million” respectively).
Then I’d generally expect people to expect me to be so sloppy with this that it doesn’t even matter (like I haven’t looked it up, to be precise about anything) if I meant to point to 5*10^3 or 5*2^10. In practice I would have meant roughly “both or either of these and I can’t be arsed to check right now, we’re just talking and not making spreadsheets or writing code or cutting material yet”.
I see it. If you try to always start with a digit, then always follow with a decimal place, then the rest implies measurement precision, and the mantissa lets you ensure a dot after the first digit <3
The most amusing exceptional case I could think of: “0.1e1” :-D
This would be like “I was trying to count penguins by eyeball in the distance against the glare of snow and maybe it was a big one, or two huddled together, or maybe it was just a weirdly shaped rock… it could have been a count of 0 or 1 or 2.”
There is a bit of a tradeoff if the notation aims to transmit the idea of measurement error.
I would read “700e6” as saying that there were three digits of presumed accuracy in the measurement, and “50e3″ as claiming only two digits of confidence in the precision.
If I knew that both were actually a measurement with a mere one part in ten of accuracy, and I was going to bodge the numeric representation for verbal convenience like this, it would give my soul a twinge of pain.
Also, if I’m gonna bodge my symbols to show how sloppy I’m being, like in text, I’d probably write 50k and 700M (pronounced “fifty kay” and “seven hundred million” respectively).
Then I’d generally expect people to expect me to be so sloppy with this that it doesn’t even matter (like I haven’t looked it up, to be precise about anything) if I meant to point to 5*10^3 or 5*2^10. In practice I would have meant roughly “both or either of these and I can’t be arsed to check right now, we’re just talking and not making spreadsheets or writing code or cutting material yet”.
FWIW, I read 700e6 the same as 700M or 7e8. If someone was trying to communicate significant figures I’d expect 7.00e8.
I see it. If you try to always start with a digit, then always follow with a decimal place, then the rest implies measurement precision, and the mantissa lets you ensure a dot after the first digit <3
The most amusing exceptional case I could think of: “0.1e1” :-D
This would be like “I was trying to count penguins by eyeball in the distance against the glare of snow and maybe it was a big one, or two huddled together, or maybe it was just a weirdly shaped rock… it could have been a count of 0 or 1 or 2.”