Slashdot Mirror
Eleventy What?
TheFr00n asks: "I recently managed to teach my ten year old son the hexadecimal number system, but he shot me back a question that has me stumped. How does one pronounce hex, after the first iteration? In decimal, we have nice words like 'fifty' and 'sixteen'. Is there an official way of pronouncing a hexadecimal number like CF9? 'See hundred and effty-nine'? (which is totally wrong anyway because a hundred is 64 in hexidecimal) Any thoughts?"
Won't just "Cee Eff Nine" work?
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
DEADBEEF always works for me but there are some who would consider it BADC0DE... :)
If there was an actual need to speak these numbers,
we'd have some slick as chit way to pronounce them.
Necessity is the MUTHA of invention. Most people go
around talking in base ten. Most people have no
need at all for anything but base ten. Go figure
it's what we have words for.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Well, if it represented a color (#c0f090), I'd call it light green.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
"CF"
"CF9"
"CF9 with Jack and Jill"
"Now F is tired"
"CF sleep..."
"69" comments are automatically modded redundant and posters will be assumed to have the mental age of an eggplant.
This is, unfortunatly, a point that has been drilled into me by my Discrete Math profs.
All non decimal systems pronounce the digits individally.
E.g. 10 in base 2 is not "ten" but "one zero"
And 734 in octal is "seven, three, four. Not seven thirty four, or variations on that theme.
Hope this helps.
Err, are not the names we give numbers independant of any notational system? i.e
The number we have given the name two and is written as "2" in decimal, in binary is written 10, but it's still called two, just the notation changed. In hexadecimal, the number we call sixteen is written 10, but it's still called sixteen.
Of course if you want say a number in a specific notation you'll need to not only spell it out but also state the system so as to avoid ambiguity ("the number `one-zero' in binary notation") as using the number's name implies the use of the decimal notation.
If you ask somebody to write down some numbers, and you read them out as "one, two, three, four", the subject should be perfectly able to use the binary notational system to write them down as "01, 10, 11, 100", they've recorded the numbers you spake correctly.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
Actually, he is. So very, very alone.
I've had this sig for three days.
Finally something I know something about. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, able, baker, Charlie, dog, easy, fox, one-zero. One-one, one-two, one-three, one-four, one-five, one-six, one-seven, one-eight, one-nine, one-able, one-baker, one-Charlie, one-dog, one-easy, one-fox, two-zero. Two-one, two-two, two-three..." Three digit numbers likewise: "One-zero-nine, one-zero-able, one-zero-baker,..., nine-fox-fox, able-zero-zero."
Andy Rooney, for example, expounds on topics just as mundane and trivial as this one, every Sunday on 3C Minutes.
and you're right, there is no current answer.
What needs to be done is to invent words that mean each of these symbols. When you say A in hex it is not the alphabet A, it's a totally different concept and needs a different word to express it.
The best way would be to invent and standardize a set of words for speaking numbers/about numbers in base 16. Because, really, 10 would be pronounced "sixteen" which makes no sense. Base16(16) should be pronounced "16" and mean base10(22).
It's a culture/language thing, you see. In order to have it make sane sense you need to think of numbers in base 16, not 10.
I have, of course, come up with my own words for each of these A-F numbers, with simple rules for how to pronounce combinations like 1CF anf D7B and so on. I'd post them, but I've mislaid the paper I wrote them on. And I think that illustrates my point: In order to remember/use these things properly, we'd have to think in another base. And that's just too impractical to be likely to happen.
I want my Cowboyneal
is that each one is 2 syllables. Hence, it's easy to partition them off in a noisy environment without wondering if you're hearing 1 or 2 digits.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Well, I don't know how to solve the problem of "hundred". But the digits can have names (and not just the letter names, which have the problem that they're hard to tell apart and A sounds like 8).
On Everything2, there's the node Names for digits higher than 9. The names for the digits - I have no idea who created them - are "dek" for A, "el" for B, "zen" for C, "tris" for D, "cat" for E, and "kink" for F.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
In section 4.1 of The Art of Computer Programming, Donald Knuth describes:
Maybe you should get that issue of that journal and give it a try.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
I was really inspired by this question. It's a wonderful mix of mathematics and linguistics. Because a quick post to Slashdot couldn't cover it in enough detail, I wrote up some thoughts I had on the subject, which you can find here. Also included is information on how Americans and Europeans differ in their transliteration of base-ten numbers.
Here's an excerpt:
How does one transliterate numbers of arbitrary bases? For example the number "562" is transliterated as "five hundred and sixty two" but how would one transliterate the hex number "0xDEADBEEF"? The text below attempts to answer that question using two methods. The first is a rigorous and technically accurate method but is difficult to use. The second is technically less rigorous but is simple to use
Michael.
Linux : Mac
Is there an official way of pronouncing a hexadecimal number like CF9?
"Three thousand five hundred seventy seven."
In the UK adding the "and" is correct, as is pronouncing the numbers after a decimal point individually.
159.34 is "one hundred and fifty nine point three four".
You'll only hear Americans and children who are just learning about decimals say "point thirty four" in the UK.