On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 10:30 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrenced...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Saturday, June 18, 2016 at 3:48:43 PM UTC+12, Random832 wrote: >> >> On Fri, Jun 17, 2016, at 19:12, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote: >>> >>> I’m not sure how you can write “30” with one digit... >> >> One *significant* digit. > > Like some credulous past-Bronze-age tribespeople understood the concept of > “significant digits” ...
I don't see why they should need to in order to measure one thing as "thirty cubits" and another thing as "ten cubits" and write those numbers down. Remember, the cubit was based on the length of the forearm, so it's not like it was a terribly precise measurement to begin with; they might not have understood significant figures, but they probably wouldn't have been overly concerned about the difference between thirty and thirty-one. Check out the rest of the chapter. Every single measurement in it above seven is a multiple of ten. > I wonder what the quality of their workmanship was like, if a measurement > accurate to one significant digit was considered sufficient ... You realize there can be a difference between the quality to which something is constructed and the precision of the measurements later used to describe it? "Threescore cubits long" is an impressive figure. "61 and a half cubits" doesn't do the job of communicating the scale any better, and ultimately amounts to wasted words in what was originally an oral tradition. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
