Comments (12)

1. In german it’s “acht” and “zwei” … which is eight and two :)

   posted by Nessie on 5-14-2008 at 7:27 am

2. Is ‘billion’ not an integer?

   posted by septer on 5-14-2008 at 8:26 am

3. “one billion” is an integer. “billion” isn’t.

   posted by Danno on 5-14-2008 at 8:33 am

4. Danno…rihgto! Thanks.

   posted by septer on 5-14-2008 at 9:26 am

5. Is “Avogadro’s constant” an integer? It counts the number of somethings in a mole of somethings, so…?

   posted by emit on 5-14-2008 at 9:35 am

6. If you count “aught” then it’s the same number for first and last…

   posted by Kevin on 5-14-2008 at 9:47 am

7. What about “a hundred” and “zilch”?

   posted by Scot on 5-14-2008 at 10:56 am

8. The phrasing of the question is important: he’s asking about integers specifically and not just numbers in general or counting words.

   posted by Tom on 5-14-2008 at 12:41 pm

9. Way to appeal the the linguistically-minded of us - I got this one without looking!

   posted by Katie on 5-14-2008 at 12:53 pm

10. Five and zero, respectively

    posted by heather on 5-14-2008 at 2:05 pm

11. avogadro’s number wouldnt be an integer even if you included any word which represents a numerical value (6.022×10^23 is not an integer because it cannot be represented without a decimal or fraction).

    also, the answer to the introductory riddle (”Isn’t it unusual that there are words that represent numbers, but not numbers that represent words?”) is that speech is primary to writing. in other words, that claim has it backwards - the word “eight” does not represent “8″; rather, “8″ represents “eight.” the names for numbers are words even if they were never written down as numerals. having numbers represent words would be pretty bizarre because our writing generally mirrors our spoken language, not the other way around.

    posted by michael on 5-15-2008 at 10:05 pm

12. A few days late with this, but: Actually, michael, the number 6.022×10^23 _is_ an integer, namely 6022 followed by 20 zeroes. (Huge!) However, that value is not exact - it is only an approximation. I don’t know how precise the latest estimate of the number is, but I am pretty sure that the number of significant figures is (and will perhaps be for as long as we live) much less than 23, so in any calculation we will use an integer for the value.

    Then some argue that the exact value is indeed an integer as well. It is defined as the number of carbon atoms in exactly 12 grammes of a certain carbon isotope. And then one may ask whether we are speaking of whole atoms or if we allow “partial atoms” to fill up our 12 grammes.

    I can’t imagine anyone calculating anything with that kind of accuracy anyway, so it doesn’t matter so much.

    posted by emit on 5-18-2008 at 6:47 am

Comment