This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
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)
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)
Orders of magnitude of torque? I could use that. -- Remi0o 09:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
It looks like some of the text in this article was taken from another source, which had chapters. There's an unchanged reference to "the first chapter" in the Non-decimal orders of magnitude section.
How about the order of magnitude for radiation? Magniloquent 23:55, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
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) Sorry, I wasn't logged in. -- DRoll ( talk) 00:57, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Such a dumb question but ...
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)
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)
Here are a few examples of how normal earthlings introduce such a concept for laypeople:
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)
I have removed redlinks from the associated template Template:Orders of magnitude wide, listed here to encourage someone to start them:
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)
I propose the following orders of magnitude (I'm naming them after the measuring unit not after what they measure because I am not sure what they measure but if someone gives them their proper name these measurements should have links to them, indeed every measurement must have a link to the "orders of magnitude" link that corresponds to it) I would do these myself if I knew how to do them...
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)
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)
I am adding to my criticism two years later. The original sentence using a word to define a word has been removed and replaced by a definition that is entirely wrong: "Orders of magnitude are written in powers of 10. For example, the order of magnitude of 1500 is 3, since 1500 may be written as 1.5 × 10^3." An OoM is NOT written as a power of ten and there is no such thing as an order of magnitude of 1500. The phrase "order of magnitude" is a comparative term thus it can't be written as a power of ten. OoMs are written as follows. "An order of magnitude [comparative term]", "two orders of magnitude [comparative term]", etc. If something is 10^2 times larger than something else it is written "something(2) is two orders of magnitude larger than something(1)". Likewise for 10^-2, "s(2) is two OsoM smaller than s(1)". The author of this article is trying to make a largely meaningless phrase into something it is not. "Order of magnitude" is a geek phrase. Dangnad ( talk) 21:04, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
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)
I cut this quote since the definition it provides is dubious:
We say two numbers have the same order of magnitude of a number if the big one divided by the little one is less than 10. For example, 23 and 82 have the same order of magnitude, but 23 and 820 do not.
But e.g. 1 and 9 are not of the same order of magnitude. Baez has ignore the element of rounding. 9/1 = 9 which is of the order of magnitude of 10, not 1. So instead, I suggest the rule should be that the ratio should be < the square root of 10, i.e. 10^0.5. Elsewhere in the article it suggests the ratio should be between 0.5 and 5, but no citation is given and that seems to ignore the use of the log scale. Ben Finn ( talk) 10:28, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't know if I ever wrote that stuff - that's the main dubious thing about that quote. Anyway, according to that quote the numbers 51 and 10 are of the same order of magnitude, while someone editing this page made up a definition where they're not. I agree with this comment:
But the quote attributed to me isn't sourced either.
Are A and B of the same order of magnitude iff
,
or
?
I don't think the concept of "order of magnitude" is precise enough to support arguments about which definition is right! It's not *supposed* to be so precise! I think the article should explain this somewhere. John Baez ( talk) 01:18, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
The article is trying to cleverly formalize a slightly informal linguistic usage as coming from a mathematical function that assigns to every positive (rational or real) number an integer called its "order of magnitude".
Nobody talks or writes this way. Not in precise scientific, quantitative or mathematical contexts and not in informal usage.
People talk about order of magnitude only in the relative sense, differences in order of magnitude. When they do, it's not usually in the precise sense of the article, nearest integer on the log_10 scale, but more like "number of decimal digits minus one" (before the decimal point) and sometimes not subtracting one, or saying "4 to 5 orders of magnitude", etc. The fuzziness is simply because the real concept is the logarithm of the ratio between two numbers, and for that all the ambiguities go away, but it's easier to speak of an integer. Regardless of how the integerization is done, nobody says things like "his annual income is of the fifth order of magnitude" that refer to a single quantity in isolation as having an order of magnitude.
If one were trying to find a precise integer valued function underpinning the common usage, the one given here would be the closest fit, but it's not possible to reproduce the actual use of the term by pointing to this newfangled "order of magnitude" construct.
Notice that most of the assertions in the article on this are unsourced. It is OR by someone well-intentioned but pushing their own ideas, or nonstandard ideas. 73.89.25.252 ( talk) 22:40, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
As mentioned above, please see the article on scientific notation as orders of magnitude come under that umbrella. With regards 613=O(600) this is confusing the order of magnitude (3 in this case) with the order, as in big O notation. These concepts are called confusingly similar things, but they are distinct. Awoma ( talk) 06:54, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Further evidence on the usage can be found by searching internet for the exact phrase "order of magnitude equal to" and "order of magnitude is". They don't occur much and when found in scientific papers they appear to be non-native users of English writing something that would be natively expressed as "magnitude of order ...", equivalent to "O(that magnitude)". I did not see any technical article using those phrases to mean OOM as exponent of 10, number of digits or log-ratio. 73.89.25.252 ( talk) 09:20, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
This article falls far short of even the wiki standards for mediocre article. It is wrong, and poorly written. Moreover, the illustration is completely misleading, as it pretends that each level to level transition is the same zoom level which should ideally be 10 or at least around 30 as is in the picture but even that is not consistent. So, it is a complete mess. The article is written from idiozs POV.
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)
Round of to the nearest 10 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.114.240.19 ( talk) 18:20, 16 February 2023 (UTC)