"Decimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... singularly awkward units of value for any one accustomed to a decimal coinage: so unreasonable and illogical," the stranger continued blandly, turning over the various pieces with a dubious air ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... with figures may be mentioned the terrible confusion which is caused by the simple dropping out of a decimal point. Thus a passage in which 6.36 is referred to naturally becomes utter nonsense when 636 is printed instead. Such a misprint is as bad as the blunder of the French compositor, who, having to set up a passage referring to Captain Cook, turned de Cook into de 600 ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... The count of the thumb, li'-ma, five, is one of the words for hand. The sixth count begins with the little finger of the left hand, and the tenth reaches the thumb. The eleventh count begins with the little finger of the right hand again, and so the count continues. The Igorot system is evidently decimal. One man, however, invariably recorded his eleventh count on his toes, from which he returned to the little finger of his right ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... great deal further than we usually do, would we find out but some fit denominations to signify them by; whereas, in the way we take now to name them, by millions of millions of millions, &c., it is hard to go beyond eighteen, or at most, four and twenty, decimal progressions, without confusion. But to show how much distinct names conduce to our well reckoning, or having useful ideas of numbers, let us see all these following figures in one continued line, as the marks of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... by higher grades or powers. The "confidence" required of the people was to be shown not only towards their nominees, but towards those who were charged with the final and most important act of selection. The winnowing processes in the election of representatives were to be carried out on a decimal system. The adult voters meeting in their several districts were to choose one-tenth of their number, this tenth being named the Notabilities of the Commune. These, some five or six hundred thousand in number, meeting in their several Departments, were ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... their reckoning lay. These things the strangers probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic, but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of sixty years. This was probably the origin of the division, adopted ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... means of small cubes, which the child can arrange and rearrange in groups. It should have at least over a hundred of these cubes—if possible a thousand; they will be useful as toy bricks, and for innumerable purposes. Our civilization is now wedded to a decimal system of counting, and, to begin with, it will be well to teach the child to count up to ten and to stop there for a time. It is suggested by Mrs. Mary Everest Boole that it is very confusing to have distinctive names for eleven and twelve, which the child is apt to class ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells |
