Number Representation Quotes

The name was supposed to be 'Googol,' which is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. It was before the Google spellchecker existed.

For the sake of brevity, we will always represent this number 2.718281828459... by the letter e.

The virtue of binary is that it's the simplest possible way of representing numbers. Anything else is more complicated. You can catch errors with it, it's unambiguous in its reading, there are lots of good things about binary. So it is very, very simple once you learn how to read it.

I didn't have a computer until I was 19 - but I did have an abacus.

How do you write zero in Roman numerals?

My age has so little to do with my image of myself because at a certain point, the number just didn't fit how I felt. It has become irrelevant to me. I just don't feel like that number is representative of my spirit, of my energy or my anything!

Beginning 'Beloved' with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city.

I suppose I can live with missing decimals, missing floors to tall buildings, and floors that are named instead of numbered. A more serious problem is the limited capacity of the human mind to grasp the relative magnitudes of large numbers. Counting at the rate of one number per second...to count to a trillion takes 32,000 years, which is as much time as has elapsed since people first drew on cave walls.

I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.

Looking at numbers as groups of rocks may seem unusual, but actually it's as old as math itself. The word "calculate" reflects that legacy - it comes from the Latin word calculus, meaning a pebble used for counting. To enjoy working with numbers you don't have to be Einstein (German for "one stone"), but it might help to have rocks in your head.

Base eight is just like base ten really, if you're missing two fingers.

We have again a strange gap. We have the big scientific discoveries around the second, third century BC. Then we have an invention of the so-called Arab system, the positional system of counting with zero dated to the eighth or ninth century.