Talk:Order of magnitude

message: Interested parties should see the List of energies in joules, which I just created before coming across this (these) page(s). (See also Talk:List of energies in joules.) I should have followed the "Orders of magnitude" link first! Anyway, the information there should probably be refactored into Orders of magnitude (energy). There are also collections of pages for length, area, volume, time, etc., as pointed out in earlier discussions. In my opinion, all of these should be redirected to the relevant "Order" pages to avoid future confusion and duplication of effort. - dcljr 09:02, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I prefer the collections (or "chains") of pages 1 E6 m, 1 E7 m, etc. That is how this area of WP began originally. The "Orders of magnitude (foo)" pages began as either an overview or a botched attempt at simplifying the main "Orders of magnitude" page. I would suggest we look into restoring the "chain" pages, a number of which have been turned into redirects. -- Tarquin 12:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it a question of one or the other?  Some of these lists would be best split up chain-like, others might be a little too thin for this.  Moreover I'd like to see these chains have larger links—thousands rather than tens would probably be better.  In fact, some parts of a chain could be bigger, and other parts smaller (I'd suggest, 10, 1000 or 106n for interger, n).  Further, it would be nice if they could have titles written in English rather than some kind of computer code (see Talk:1 E-3 s#Title). Jɪmp 07:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "1 E* J" series and others... 

message: This oddly worded section (which I boldly deleted) gave the order of magnitude of 340 as 3.
This contradicts the earlier "take the log and truncate" method which would give trunc(2.53) or 2.
Thoughts on this? Restore it if you liked it (and don't tell me please). Caltrop 01:19, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradictory section "Working Out the Orders of Magnitude" 

message: Orders of magnitude of torque? I could use that. --Remi0o 09:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Torque 

message: How about the order of magnitude for radiation? Magniloquent 23:55, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed! (only 3 years late!) SteveBaker (talk) 19:10, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Radiation 

message: In Computer Science the order of magnitude often refers to powers of 2 or more commonly powers of n where n is any integer. I my humble opinion this entire article needs the help of someone who understands number theory. --209.216.184.118 (talk) 00:55, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of magnitude?? 

message: Such a dumb question but ...
lim_{x \to 0}x = - \infty
so it would seem to me that the order of magnitude of zero would generally be taken as undefined.  Am I right?  Is it considered to be −∞?  Surely the order of magnitude of zero is not zero ... right? JIMp talk·cont 23:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You are correct.  Orders of magnitude are associated with positive numbers. Xihr (talk) 03:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  So, like zero isn't a positive number? Is it negative? 88.151.26.71 (talk) 00:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  0 is neither positive nor negative. --Jhertel (talk) 08:47, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

text: You're wrong.  lim_{x \to 0}x \neq - \infty. Actually lim_{x \to 0}x = 0.CountMacula (talk) 19:04, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  He meant lim_{x \to 0^+}Log(x) = - \infty  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.121.65.4 (talk) 23:35, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of magnitude of zero 

message: This page is terrible. It seems like it is trying to find a common ground between readers with little or no mathematical background and someone with a modicum of understanding of the language of mathematics. It needs to decide which class of reader it is aimed at. My preference would be someone who does not have a mathematical background. With that in mind the first two paragraphs could be much better summarised as something like: ``Most commonly, when two quantities are compared as having an order-of-magnitude difference, it is taken to mean that the two quantities involved differ by a factor of about ten. Logarithmic scales and questions of which base is most likely being invoked by the qualifier "order-of-magnitude" can be introduced, but the page should try to introduce such concepts in a logical way. 
As it is this page has no cohesion, doesn't know who its target audience is, and (to agree with another comment here) has sections that seem to be lifted verbatim from other sources without any consideration of the expository nature of this medium. If the author wishes merely to regurgitate what he has learned from other sources, he should at least make some effort to present that in a way that will be clear to those who do not have the appropriate textbooks to hand, and whose motivation in looking up this page is to expand their knowledge rather than merely read a poorly-constructed precis of someone's course notes. 88.151.26.71 (talk) 00:51, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Between two stools 

message: I believe the correct number for 10^27 is octillion, not gazillion.  I'll let someone else fill in the details. -- Ithacagorges 03:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah - we have someone trying to be funny here...we call them "vandals". SteveBaker (talk) 14:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Octillion, not "Gazillion" 

message: I have removed redlinks from the associated template :Template:Orders of magnitude wide, listed here to encourage someone to start them:
*Orders of magnitude (angular frequency)
*Orders of magnitude (concentration)
*Orders of magnitude (current)
*Orders of magnitude (momentum)
This makes the template more consistent with its tall version, they can be re-added when the articles exist. -84user (talk) 19:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redlinks 

message: I've never heard "of the order of"; I've always heard "on the order of". Is this a regional or historical difference? (I'm in U.S.)  A web search of "of the order of" returns mostly results like "...of the Order of Bath". Thrmlbrk (talk) 20:48, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "of the order of" vs. "on the order of" 

message: This article is a total mess. The very first sentence uses "magnitude" in the definition of "order of magnitude". I found where this article's definition came from, from Wiktionary which now lowers my estimation of Wiktionary by...uh...2 orders of magnitude". 
Here is a great definition from the FreeDictionary.org/Wordnet [Note: its first def concerns order like *on the order of a kilometer*, see Thrmlbrk above] "a number assigned to the ratio of two quantities; two quantities are of the same order of magnitude if one is less than 10 times as large as the other; the number of magnitudes that the quantities differ is specified to within a power of 10" .... right! it's a comparative term.
All of the garbage that follows in this article is an attempt to place some kind of mathematical or technical meaning on a nebulous language concept "order of magnitude". It can't be done. Here's my go at it: An order of magnitude is 10X. Three orders of magnitude is 1000X.  Since OoM is simply a phrase meaning "ten times" it has no positive or negative connotation therefore it must be succeeded by a comparative modifier such as bigger, smaller, longer, shorter, etc. Dangnad (talk) 19:59, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  An ''order of magnitude'' is the magnitude 

message: Corrections:
Kilo [K], not kilo [k].  (e.g: Km = Kilometer)
Hecto [H], not hecto [h].  (e.g: Ha = Hectoare)
Deka/Deca [D], not deka/deca [da].  (e.g: Dg = Dekagram/Decagram)
You don't need such "ONLY ONE" inconsistent 2-letter symbol here ("da" for "Deka") while all other SI magnitude scale symbols use solely and only 1-letter symbols! Be consistent with your own standard, SI!
The SI was defined scale symbols above base reference (10^0 = 1) must be capitalized and below must be lower-cased, this measure was done to avoid misinterpretation between its own 1-letter scale symbols.
We can see the traces for all MAJOR/UP scale symbols following the 'old' rule with capitalized letters such as [G]iga/[M]ega/[T]era/[P]eta, etc (very useful to differentiate with other MINOR/DOWN scale symbols that uses lowercased 1-letter symbols such as "[p]ico" from "[P]eta" for example).
So, why on earth SI beginning to use lowercase-letter symbols for those three MAJOR magnitude scales that violates its own standard?
Si should define and prioritize the magnitude scale symbols FIRST, since this one uses 1-letter symbols and conflicts are greater in this scope/region.
For example, how one can tell that "1 K" means "1 Kilo" instead of "1 Kelvin", if both have the same 1-letter symbol and capital case?
Proposal:
Kelvin as temperature unit can be symbol-defined with more than 1-letter symbol as: "Kn" (just like "Pa" for "Pascal" and "Wb" for "Weber" - so, why is it not also valid for Kelvin?), "Kelv", "Kvn"/"Klv", or simply reverting to old standard to prefix temperature unit with degree symbol (°K).
Even I can propose to use lowercased "k" for Kelvin, I prefer to reserve it for future MINOR/DOWN magnitude scale of SI standard, just in case the magnitude scale order is widened/enlarged and necessary.
Other SI symbols conflicting with these 1-letter magnitude scale symbols should be replaced with non-conflicting ones, using more than 1-letter symbol is recommended if conflicts always exist when searching/using 1-letter symbols just like my Kelvin symbol replacement proposal here.
Prioritize your SI magnitude scale symbols FIRST, then other non-MagnitudeScale symbols - then you will be confused much less by your own double standards, since scale symbols can always be paired with other non-scale unit symbols that may added more confusion if the magnitude scale symbols group (that uses 1-letter symbols, as strictly as possible as an excellent magnitude scale standard) is not strictly predefined FIRST in the 1st place.
==> [Ois1974 @ 2013-12-21 Sat]
114.79.49.125 (talk) 07:38, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth: Since this user insisted on restoring this same message at Talk:International System of Units after it was removed, I've now attempted to communicate with this user at User talk:114.79.49.227. --Closeapple (talk) 20:10, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Unit and prefix symbols are officially standardized. Prefix symbols less than or equal to 103 (kilo-, k-) are lowercase, while bigger prefixes are capitalized (only the symbols, not the names; hence megawatt, gigawatt etc. are not capitalized). A number of unit symbols are the same as a prefix symbol; m can mean meter or milli-; G can mean gauss or giga-; T can mean tesla or tera-. However, prefix symbols are normally used only in combination with root unit names, so it is understood whether a unit or a prefix is meant. Capital K is sometimes used informally to mean thousand, but it is understood from context whether thousand or kelvin is meant.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 20:45, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistent SI scale standard (IMPORTANT Reminder to SI double-standard) 

message: This article suffers from a problem that afflicts many minor articles on Wikipedia. It is founded on a definition that exists only on Wikipedia, a definition that was crafted by a Wikipedian editor/author but is not sourced --and therefore a break with the fundamental principle of Wikipedia. In particular, the article claims that we need to work out the order of magnitude of a number by expressing it as a*10^b and further that  0.5<a<=5. This does not represent common understanding of the concept. Rather it represents some editor's attempt to formalize a definition. It is also mathematically inconsistent. If an order of magnitude is accepted as being a power of ten, then half an order of magnitude is 10^0.5 (the square root of 10, roughly 3.16). In order of magnitude terms, 400 is closer to 10^3 than it is to 10^2 (since 400 is approximately 10^2.60). Hence this attempted definition, placing the dividing line for orders of magnitude at 0.5 or 5, is not just unsourced, it is also arguably mathematically incorrect. 174.199.11.51 (talk) 18:38, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedian invention 

message: The “Unicode Symbols” column should be removed from the table. These symbols exist in Unicode for round-trip compatibility with previously existing Japanese character sets. They are not the preferred or recommended way of representing these units in normal Unicode text.
For example, if you want to write that something weighs 5 kg, you just write the two ASCII letters “k” and “g”; you would not use the compatibility symbol “㎏” unless you are writing in Japanese (kanji and kana) where these symbols are expected.
Furthermore, the inclusion of these symbols adds nothing to the general discussion of order-of-magnitude. If they belong anywhere, it would be in the article on metric prefixes (in which case the base units and the non-metric symbols like “㏋” and “㏙” don't belong). And in any event, someone has added the pure-ASCII symbols “TB” and “PB” which completely defeat the purpose of having a column of special, beyond-ASCII symbols. Doug Ewell (talk) 17:52, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unicode symbols 

message: Could we add a section presenting the scale of everything (e.g. elemtary particles, species, galaxies) that goes into more detail than the current image and its caption?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by AHumanEditor (talk • contribs) 00:55, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scale of Everything 

message: Pervasive use of the word 'logarithm' dramatically increases the education required to understand the summary. I think this could be re-worded to make this topic more easily understood by folks with less education. 75.191.193.134 (talk) 15:14, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logarithm 

message: Round of to the nearest 10  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.114.240.19 (talk) 18:20, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematics