Revision as of 21:13, 21 December 2024 editQuondum (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users36,912 edits →Multiple of a unit of measurement by an integer power of two??: r← Previous edit | Latest revision as of 20:22, 22 December 2024 edit undoTom94022 (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users8,105 edits →Multiple of a unit of measurement by an integer power of two??: Are they positive integer powers of 1024? | ||
Line 39: | Line 39: | ||
: If we had names for other powers of two, they too would be called binary prefixes. The fact that we find only a certain subset of these prefixes convenient enough for general use to create a name does not mean that we should necessarily use the smallest (obvious) category that contains this subset. And no, it is not misleading: it is predicated on the practicality of implementing memory sizes as powers of 2, not of 1024. When the prefixes 'centi', 'deci', 'deca' and 'hecto' fall into disuse, will it be misleading to call the remaining prefixes (all of which are powers of 1000) "decimal prefixes"? (Actually, these are more commonly called "]es", but that is an even vaguer category.) —] 21:13, 21 December 2024 (UTC) | : If we had names for other powers of two, they too would be called binary prefixes. The fact that we find only a certain subset of these prefixes convenient enough for general use to create a name does not mean that we should necessarily use the smallest (obvious) category that contains this subset. And no, it is not misleading: it is predicated on the practicality of implementing memory sizes as powers of 2, not of 1024. When the prefixes 'centi', 'deci', 'deca' and 'hecto' fall into disuse, will it be misleading to call the remaining prefixes (all of which are powers of 1000) "decimal prefixes"? (Actually, these are more commonly called "]es", but that is an even vaguer category.) —] 21:13, 21 December 2024 (UTC) | ||
::{{ping|Stevebroshar}} has a valid point. ''Binary prefixes'' historically are defined in positive integer powers of 1024 and are likely to continue to do so. They go back to the approximate equivalence of 1,024 to 1,000 and unlike metric prefixes are not defined for each power of the base number to a maximum and not to a minimum at all. Whether the rarely used metric prefixes fall into disuse or not is irrelevant, they would remain defined. I think we would have to find an RS to change the article to state "positive integer powers of 1024" but with one I would support such a such a change. ] (]) 20:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
Latest revision as of 20:22, 22 December 2024
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Binary prefix article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
|
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18Auto-archiving period: 2 months |
This article is rated B-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Archives | ||||||||||||||||||
Index
|
||||||||||||||||||
This page has archives. Sections older than 60 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 1 section is present. |
Template-table references removed from article, preserved here
|
|
Multiple of a unit of measurement by an integer power of two??
WRT "A binary prefix is a unit prefix that indicates a multiple of a unit of measurement by an integer power of two". Is it? Or is it a power of 1024? Yes, they are all powers of 2, but calling them that seems misleading. That they are power of 2 doesn't seem like the most central defining property of this set of multiples. Stevebroshar (talk) 20:57, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- If we had names for other powers of two, they too would be called binary prefixes. The fact that we find only a certain subset of these prefixes convenient enough for general use to create a name does not mean that we should necessarily use the smallest (obvious) category that contains this subset. And no, it is not misleading: it is predicated on the practicality of implementing memory sizes as powers of 2, not of 1024. When the prefixes 'centi', 'deci', 'deca' and 'hecto' fall into disuse, will it be misleading to call the remaining prefixes (all of which are powers of 1000) "decimal prefixes"? (Actually, these are more commonly called "metric prefixes", but that is an even vaguer category.) —Quondum 21:13, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Stevebroshar: has a valid point. Binary prefixes historically are defined in positive integer powers of 1024 and are likely to continue to do so. They go back to the approximate equivalence of 1,024 to 1,000 and unlike metric prefixes are not defined for each power of the base number to a maximum and not to a minimum at all. Whether the rarely used metric prefixes fall into disuse or not is irrelevant, they would remain defined. I think we would have to find an RS to change the article to state "positive integer powers of 1024" but with one I would support such a such a change. Tom94022 (talk) 20:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- B-Class Computing articles
- High-importance Computing articles
- B-Class software articles
- Unknown-importance software articles
- B-Class software articles of Unknown-importance
- All Software articles
- B-Class Computer hardware articles
- High-importance Computer hardware articles
- B-Class Computer hardware articles of High-importance
- All Computing articles