I always thought the cover to Ben Harper’s album “Fight for your Mind” was a good representation about how I felt, when they started forcing me to integrate letters and numbers, in that way:
The funny part is that his theorem had already been discovered by an ancient civilization. I want to say the sumarians, but honestly that’s the only one I’m familiar with, so I could be wrong.
Well, according to the dictionary and Wikipedia (which I both consulted before posting) the word number applies to both 11 and 1. Since that was not good enough for me I added the words cyphers and digits to bring the point across.
Please explain how you missed that / why you pretended to?
Huh? I didn’t miss it, that line is exactly why I’m even having this discussion with you
You have 10 numbers (or cyphers/digits)
I’ll say it again, because I think you missed it, numbers are not cyphers or digits, and the terms can’t be used interchangeably unless you can only count to 9. Since you brought it up, the first 3 lines on the numbers Wikipedia page:
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth.[1] Numbers can be represented in language with number words.
By its definition, there are infinite natural numbers, but all types of numbers are infinite in quantity. When you say “number”, you seem to be thinking of what Wikipedia calls “number words” or “numerals”, or the terms “digits” or “cyphers” that you brought up. Those last four terms are components of language, they can represent numbers, but in the context you provided (“You have 10 ____”), you really shouldn’t have used the word numbers.
TL;DR, digits are to numbers as letters are to words. There are 10 digits (in base 10), and 26 letters (in English). There are infinite numbers, and there might as well be infinite words
Interesting. That’s not what I get, especially when I read past that sentence in the article or consult other sources.
Commonly they can be used interchangeably whether you like it or not. Depending on audience you might need to differentiate. Given the context of the post and the thread we’re in I’m going to use common language.
What motivates your interest in this? Are you a native speaker?
Yeah, why do you ask out of curiosity? I guess my interest is because I’m a cs/math student so I’ve been dealing with number theory a lot the last few years.
Also I skimmed the rest of the article, and to me it looks like wikipedia editors have actually been very careful not to conflate numbers and numerals, so I’m not sure what you mean. In fact, under history>numerals it even says “Numbers should be distinguished from numerals”
Why? This is a bit complicated to explain. Please take the following in good faith in case I mess it up. 🙂
Even though I’m doing quite well English is not my 1st language. I’ve seen students of a new language fixate on stuff many times. So I wanted to check for that.
In my native language number and numeral are commonly used interchangeably. Exceptions are when you want to indicate how many digits a number has and quite possibly maths students and profs.
Also experts in their fields tend to be fixed on detail that is not relevant or used in common language. An example would be a biologist that wants you to stop calling a strawberry a berry (I’ve encountered similar things in a couple of fields). You’re a cs/maths student so at least that checks out. 😉
Even though I’m educated (uni) in biology (horrible hairsplitters if you let them) and cs (IMO less hairsplitting than bio/maths) I tend to adapt my vocabulary to the crowd and mostly keep it simple. I think the meme is stupid regardless whether you interpret numbers or numerals in the first sentence. OPs user name indicates they are German, so they also grew up using the word ‚Zahl‘ for both. (In a way the meme is slightly less stupid when you consider this)
So I tried to convey the term numeral by providing three synonyms - or so I thought. I thought just using the word digit would lead to many people not understanding. Now I’m having the ‚silliest argument‘ while probably being the sillier part in it. It’s enjoyable though.
Back to the silliness: ChatGPT pointed this article out to me. So, while you are absolutely right in the proper use of the two terms it is also true that they are commonly used interchangeably. This might be a recent development though.
Ah, I missed that (and the typo obviously). I usually ‘type’ by tracing my fingers across the keyboard on mobile. This method is 97% correct, 2% incorrect ,and 1% hilarious or embarrassing.
I need to do a better job proofreading and you could do a better job pointing out the typos (so even slow people like me can catch on).
Add comment