"Decimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he answered, lazily shutting his eyes. "The earth is the planet on which we live, and is about twenty-five thousand miles round; a decimal fraction is one whose denominator is ten, one hundred, one thousand, or and so ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... mode of procedure consisted in a series of raps given with his fore-paws, similar to those given by the horses with their hoofs; but Rolf used the same paw for both decimals and units, so that we had from time to time to inquire after every number rapped out—'Is it a decimal or a unit?' Whereupon he would rap 'yes,' or 'no'—as the case might be. The numbers were then written down and the answers ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... measures, in a country subject to the same laws. The Academy of Sciences was charged to seek and present the best mode of carrying this decree into execution. That society proposed the adoption of the decimal division, by taking for a fundamental unit the ten-millionth part of the quarter of the terrestrial meridian. The motives which determined this choice were the extreme simplicity of decimal calculation, and the advantage of having a measure taken from nature. The ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... so far in the knowledge of numbers, as to have distinctive names for the ten units, and for an hundred and a thousand, with all the intermediate numbers compounded of decimal terms. To preserve the memory of their transactions, they used a bunch of threads of several colours called pron, similar to the quippo of the Peruvians, oh which they cast a number of knots according to circumstances. The subject was indicated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... dollar is divided into 100 cents, and is worth itself 4s. 2d. Thus each cent represents one halfpenny; twenty-five cents, roughly one shilling; and the English sovereign is generally worth $4.85, generally written $4^85, and read four dollars eighty-five cents. This decimal system is most convenient for all calculations. I may give one example. Suppose the exchange to be as above, L1 $4.85, and I want to send the equivalent of L210 to America; I simply multiply 485 by 210 and divide the product ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... because of the confusion which often arises in people's minds as to the number of rings that they hear. When, therefore, the number of stations to be rung by code exceeds five, it is better to employ combinations of long and short rings, and a good way is to adopt a partial decimal system, omitting the numbers higher than five in each ten, and employing long rings to indicate the tens digits and short rings to indicate the units digit, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... cents according to the place where it is exchanged. Bank of England notes or pounds are never worth less than four shillings and twopence, i.e., 480 cents or halfpennies, which, of course, is four dollars and 80 cents, there being 100 cents in a dollar. The decimal currency is extremely simple when once understood. Never less than 4.80 is given for an English pound, but sometimes 4.82 ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... mathematician is a stickler for little things. He insists that figures should be plainly made, and that 1 1 should never be allowed to equal 3. He is wholly in the right, because the slightest error in reading a number, in placing a decimal point, or in finding a sum must vitiate the whole result. Little things of that sort are called little, but they are in ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... must have lived in odd times. In our days he would not have gone far without falling in with a teetotaller, or a decimal coinage man, or a school-for-all man, or a competitive examination man, who would not allow a drayman to lower a barrel into a cellar unless he could expound the mathematical principles by which he performed ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the common ancestor of our own and of most European tongues), what impresses us most of all, in these Aryans, is their intellectual energy. The Hindus of the rationalistic age made original discoveries. They invented grammar, geometry, arithmetic, decimal notation, and they elaborated astronomy, medicine, mental philosophy and logic (with syllogism) before these sciences were known or perfected in Greece. In the seventh century before Christ, Kapila taught a system of philosophy, of which that of the Europeans, Schopenhaur and Hartmann, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... on the same tablet, according to the relative importance of the text, show a striving after clearness and method such as can by no means be said to be a characteristic of Classical Greek inscriptions.'[*] A decimal system of numbers was in use, the highest single amount referred to being 19,000, and percentages were evidently well understood, as a whole series of tablets ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... height, criminals generally weigh less than normal individuals, whose weight in kilogrammes is given by the decimal figures of his height as expressed in metres ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... she continued, without a rhetorical pause to indicate the decimal points between her thoughts, "I was interested in what you said about immortality last Sunday. Now, I wonder if you know it is an actual fact that by breathing rhythmically thirty times, counting three while you inhale, three while you exhale and three while you hold your breath, you can actually ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... on a decimal system, with intermediate weights for closer working, or they may be made so as to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... after her departure scratching his chin. He crossed his legs, shook his elevated foot, showed every sign of profound concentration. He was making up his mind to become a decimal point in the Woman Suffrage Movement. It was like making up his mind to be born again, and not ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... what interval of time, then the course of the events between these two moments would go on repeating itself for ever and ever afterwards in due order, down to the minutest detail, in an endless series of cycles like a circulating decimal. For the universe comprises everything; there could therefore be no disturbance from without. Once a ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... for his peculiar notice,—and those two were Miss Boncassen and Lady Mabel. While he would himself walk, and talk, and argue after his own peculiar fashion with the American beauty,—explaining to her matters political and social, till he persuaded her to promise to read his pamphlet upon decimal coinage,—he was always making awkward efforts to throw Silverbridge and Lady Mabel together. The two girls saw it all and knew well how the matter was,—knew that they were rivals, and knew each the ground on which she herself and on which the other stood. But neither was satisfied ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... his will. He is a man of great physical strength and phenomenal endurance. He has been known to walk forty-eight hours at a stretch, and to pump ninety-six. His life is arduous and full of peril. A mistake in the working of a sum may keep him digging a fortnight without sleep. A repeating decimal in the answer might ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... the weight of discs made of carbon steel, in diameters up to and including 12 in., without any allowance for finishing multiply the per foot weight of round bar steel, shown herewith by the decimal equivalent of a foot ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... an odd number," returned Thorwald. "With us the week is the basis of our decimal method of reckoning. We have one hundred minutes in an hour and ten ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... perfectly able to perform, and build his hope of encouragement on no other foundation than his assiduity to merit it.' His 'course' is nevertheless a pretty full one, including English, French, Latin, Greek, writing in a natural and easy style after the best precedents; arithmetic, vulgar and decimal; geography, with use of the globes; geometry, navigation with all the late modern improvements; algebra, and every other useful and ornamental branch of mathematical learning. Some of the other male teachers write in a similar strain of ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... night—in fact, every time when I could snatch a few minutes. I really believe that at one time I could have repeated the whole of the book from memory. Now I found the value of arithmetic, and set to work in earnest on proportion, vulgar and decimal fractions, and, in fact, everything in school work that I could turn to account in the science of chemistry. The result of this sudden application was that I was seized with an illness. For some months I had incessant headache; my hair became dried ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... the same. He took the principal ledger and found that, leaving the high figures out of the question, very stupid mistakes in the additions had been made. Evidently his wife knew nothing of denominate quantities or decimal fractions. This unheard of cheating of the servants must certainly lead ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... necessity of adhering to the precepts of the sacred books. Science was monopolized by the priests; and it is said that by them the King was regularly sworn to retain the old and unintercalated year. The want of decimal notation, and the consequent clumsiness of the system of numeration, would go far to preclude the improvement of arithmetic, or any science into ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... of the frog with our own is enough to show this. It is well known that this hereditary number of the toes has assumed a very great practical importance from remote times; on it our whole system of enumeration (the decimal system applied to measurement of time, mass, weight, etc.) is based. There is absolutely no reason why there should be five toes in the fore and hind feet in the lowest Amphibia, the reptiles, and the higher Vertebrates, unless we ascribe it to inheritance ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... Man; the triumphant tribune and citizen. A number so symmetrical as that really rises out of the region of science into the region of art. It is a pattern, like the egg-and-dart ornament or the Greek key. One might edge a wall-paper or fringe a robe with a recurring decimal. And while the voter luxuriated in this light exactitude of the numbers, a thought crossed his mind and he almost leapt to his feet. "Why, good heavens!" he cried. "I won that election; and it was won by one vote! But ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... imperceptible substance by way of vibration which constitutes matter at all; it is the character of the vibrations which constitutes the particular kind of matter. (May we imagine that some vibrations vibrate with a rhythm which has a tendency to recur like the figures in a recurring decimal, and that here we have the origin ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... public life, it will be of interest to us to see how he helped his countrymen in other ways. Two valuable and lasting improvements have come down from him. The first of these was the system of decimal currency, which replaced the clumsy system of pounds, shillings, and pence used in colonial days. When you are called upon to work out examples in English currency, be grateful to Thomas Jefferson that we have instead the much simpler ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... numbers from 20 to 30, lekor, a score, is sometimes used instead of dua-puloh (especially in mentioning dates), but in that case the unit precedes instead of following the decimal; as sa-lekor, twenty-one; dua-lekor, twenty-two; ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... and the use of fractions were taught daily. The use of the decimal in the American coinage is of great advantage; it is easier and more intelligible to children than the clumsy old system of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings. It is a system which would no doubt have been long ago adopted ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... Canada) will be in such a hurry to enlist that he cannot spare the time to think out things carefully, what can he expect? Shortly after midnight of May 7th to 8th a telegram arrived: "Reference my A.B.C. 3535; your X.Y.Z. 97S; their decimal nine recurring. Please cancel all payment of rtn. allce. to Sergeant Blank, Akk. Akk. Akk. This N.C.O. belonging to a Canadian unit should apply direct to Paymaster, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... particular constitutions to grapple with, ten sets of garments to provide, ten series of ailments to combat, ten—no, let me see, two hundred and forty teeth to take to the dentist, not to mention characters and consciences in all their developments and phases, rising, on this appalling decimal system of yours, to regions of arithmetic ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... our gold coinage (retaining the decimal system) and that of England should be assimilated. This could be easily done by having in our half eagle the same amount of gold and alloy as in the British sovereign, carrying the system through our whole gold coinage. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Committee's decision to adopt the Dewey Decimal System of Classification, some attempt was made to classify the books ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... mere counting does not imply either the possession or the use of anything that can be really called the mathematical faculty, the exercise of which in any broad sense has only been possible since the introduction of the decimal notation. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Jews, and the Chinese had all such cumbrous systems, that anything like a science of arithmetic, beyond very simple operations, was impossible; and the Roman system, by which ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... same; that no two people's heads in the picture are to be turned the same way, and that all the personages represented are to possess ideal beauty of the highest order, which ideal beauty consists partly in a Greek outline of nose, partly in proportions expressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin; but mostly in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen is to bestow upon God's work in general. This I say is the kind of teaching which through various channels, Royal Academy lecturings, press criticisms, public ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... use, bullion and paper notes being the other media of exchange. Silver Mexican dollars and subsidiary coins came into use with the advent of foreign commerce. Weights and measures (which generally decreased from north to south), officially arranged partly on the decimal system, were discarded by the people in ordinary commercial transactions for the more ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... count, the decimal system should be kept well in mind, and the teacher should see that thirteen means three-ten, and that the children can touch the three and the ten as they speak the word. Eleven and twelve ought to be called oneteen and twoteen, half in joke. The idea of grouping ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... were the epic fights, unimportant in themselves, but which need only a Kingsley or a Stevenson to make them famous for all time. So with the happenings to be described in this book, many of them historically unimportant compared with the epoch-making events of which they formed a decimal part, but told in plain words; just records of romance on England's sea frontier in ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... that I looked upon the whole affair more in the light of a party of pleasure than a tax, reminding them that I had not only obtained an insight into a new philosophy, but that I was already, thanks to the decimal system, a tolerable proficient in their ancient and learned language. These civilities were scarcely well over, before we were boarded by the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not to use words beginning with S, except to translate decimals and fractions, and Date-words where a doubt might otherwise arise (unless in a phrase like "To see Jiji," "delay a spy," &c.); and in case of the decimals, S, as the initial letter, means (not 0, but) the decimal point. (1) If there is an integer followed by a decimal, two separate words are used; the decimal-word begins with S, thus: 945.51 barley sold; 71.3412 "good Samaritan." (2) If it is a decimal by itself, the S indicates the decimal point only; .01 society; .02 Susan; ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... The proportion which the eclipsed part of the surface of the sun or moon bears to the diameter; it is sometimes expressed in digits, but more frequently as a decimal, the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the most accurate chronometric reckoning, old Mr. Beirne timed his proceedings to a decimal. The last line of the slow-read poem died in a deafening uproar without. Every bell in the city, it seemed, every whistle and chime, every firecracker and penny-trumpet and cannon (there was but one), to say nothing of many an inebriated human voice, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... measurements or fractions. And without doubt much time is wasted in attempting to teach these subjects without a ready command of the fundamental operations. Further, pupils must know well both common and decimal fractions before they can proceed to percentage. They must know and be able to recognize readily the different "parts of speech" before they can ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... inquiring the slightest clue. She knew, indeed, little herself, whatever she may have guessed. As for Hungerford, he was dumb. He refused to consider the matter. But he roundly maintained once or twice, without any apparent relevance, that a woman was like a repeating decimal—you could follow her, but you never could reach her. He usually added to this: "Minus one, Marmion," meaning thus to exclude the girl who preferred him to any one else. When I ventured to suggest that Miss Treherne might also ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... orderly fashion the larger cells with the small, the bees will erect a certain number of what are known as transition cells. These must of necessity be irregular in form; but so unerringly accurate are the dimensions of the second and third types that, at the time when the decimal system was established, and a fixed measure sought in nature to serve as a starting-point and an incontestable standard, it was proposed by Reaumur to select for this purpose the cell of ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... New York State Library and from 1888 to 1900 was secretary of the University of the State of New York, completely reorganizing the state library, which he made one of the most efficient in America, and establishing the system of state travelling libraries and picture collections. His "Decimal System of Classification" for library cataloguing, first proposed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... I quit this subject, that the Martial system of arithmetic differs from ours principally in the use of a duodecimal instead of a decimal basis. Figures are written on a surface divided into minute squares, and the value of a figure, whether it signify so many units, dozens, twelve dozens, and so forth, depends upon the square in which ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... means (if it be justified) that it is not a human being at all, but a mere embodiment of two or three characteristics which are fully displayed within the first ten minutes, and then keep on repeating themselves, like a recurrent decimal. Strong theatrical effects can be produced by this method, which is that of the comedy of types, or of "humors." But it is now generally, and rightly, held that a character should be primarily an individual, and only incidentally (if at all) capable of classification under this ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... rest of the family. Matilda coloured at first, and looked as if she knew nothing of the business; but a distinct answer was given at last, and Isabella's opinions of her sister's abilities rose with amazing rapidity, when she heard that Matilda understood decimal fractions. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... again, for they knew where the error in 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 ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... for the Romans, partly because they had no figure or other sign for zero, partly because they used a decimal system for counting and a duodecimal for their money, and partly because the Roman system of notation (I, V, X, L, C, D, M) did not adapt itself to quick calculation. Try, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... kadukeco. Decaying kaduka. Decease (v.) morti. Deceit artifiko—eco. Deceive trompi. Deceived, to be trompigxi. December Decembro. Decent deca. Deception trompo. Decide decidi. Decided decida. Decimal decimalo. Decipher decxifri. Decisive decidiga. Deck (adorn) ornami. Deck (ship) ferdeko. Declaim deklami. Declaration deklaracio. Declaration (of love) amesprimo. Declare sciigi, anonci. Declension deklinacio. Decline ekfinigxo. Decline (health) ekmalfortigxi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... have to deal with are not actually those just mentioned. The clown that has a 9 on his body is portrayed just at the moment when two balls which he is juggling are in mid-air. The positions of these balls clearly convert his figure into the recurring decimal .[.9]. Now, since the recurring decimal .[.9] is equal to 9/9, and therefore to 1, it is evident that, although the clown who bears the figure 1 is absent, the man who bears the figure 9 by this simple artifice has for the occasion given his figure ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... three minutes late in starting; it is well to be precise. A special correspondent who is not precise is a geometer who neglects to run out his calculations to the tenth decimal. This delay of three minutes made the German our traveling companion. I have an idea that this good man will furnish me with some copy, but ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... motionlessness, it is perhaps merely turning into a terrible speed which we cannot perceive. It is the turning of an hour-glass. When I am dead, I wish only my faults to be chronicled, for these alone have any value for the world. I have dreamt always of cycles of infinities. As a decimal always tends by evolution towards a number, so also we evolve toward an infinity. Yet at that goal another infinity starts, as another infinity starts in numbers,—the symbol of ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... tombs of the Medici; could produce the Vita Nuova; could beget Galileo, Galvani, Beccaria; but still—they were Foreigners. Providence in its wisdom has decreed that they must live Abroad—just as it has decreed that a comprehension of the decimal system and its own place in the world should be limitations eternally ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... this defect. Counting should be taught be 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 with the single ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog, or blew a transistor, or something. It was fantastic that the error—one of two decimal places—should enjoy a straight run of okays, human and mechanical, clear down the line; but when the figures clacked out at the last clacking-out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred; immutable; and it is doubtful whether the President of the concern or the Chairman of the Board ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... Bering's Straits, not only in the hands of merchants but in many private houses. It consists of a wooden frame ordinarily a foot long and six inches wide. There are ten metal wires strung across this frame, and ten balls of wood on each wire. The Russian currency is a decimal one, and by means of this machine computations are carried on with wonderful rapidity. I have seen numbers added by a boy and a machine faster than a New York bank teller could make the same reckoning. It requires long practice to become ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... 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
... reverently in the small, time-worn church at Honedale, her thoughts, it must be confessed, were wandering more to the to-morrow and Aikenside, than to the sacred words her lips were uttering. She knew it was wrong, and with a nervous start would try to bring her mind back from decimal fractions to what the minister was saying; but Maddy was mortal, and right in the midst of the Collect, Aikenside and its owner would rise before her, together with the wonder how she and her grandfather would feel one week from ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... if a man had invented arithmetic, algebra, or the decimal system, he would have obtained no patent; but Bareme would have had a right of property in his Computations. Pascal, for his theory of the weight of the atmosphere, would not have been patented; instead of him, a glazier would have obtained ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... culture,[777] and appears in the use of the vigesimal system of enumeration in primitive Mexico, Central America, among the Tlingits of the Northwest coast and the Eskimo as also among the Chukches and Ainus of Asia, while in the Atlantic section of North America the decimal system, with one doubtful ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the articles cost per dozen by 10. which is done by removing the decimal point one place ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Fine Arts Drawings, architectural and free hand College of Applied Science Metal work Wood work Model of steam engine Home-made laboratory apparatus University of the State of New York. Grand prize Bulletins Reports Decimal classification Traveling library for the blind Photographs Large pictures Statistical charts Specimens ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... nearest tenth of a unit, or, if there are two hundred or more individual measurements in the distribution, it may be found interesting to calculate the median point to the nearest hundredth of a scale unit. Very seldom will anything be gained by carrying the calculation beyond the second decimal place. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... favorite medicine men, the great chiefs McGarrity and Siberstein, bottlers, Chicago. And the other was a frivolous system of pick-pocketing the Kansasters that had the department stores reduced to a decimal fraction. Look ye! A pair of silk garters, a dream book, one dozen clothespins, a gold tooth, and 'When Knighthood Was in Flower' all wrapped up in a genuine Japanese silkarina handkerchief and handed to the handsome lady by Mr. Peters for the trivial sum of fifty cents, while Professor ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... abstract relations than we can do so with our sense-experiences. They coerce us; we must treat them consistently, whether or not we like the results. The rules of addition apply to our debts as rigorously as to our assets. The hundredth decimal of pi, the ratio of the circumference to its diameter, is predetermined ideally now, tho no one may have computed it. If we should ever need the figure in our dealings with an actual circle we should need to have it given rightly, calculated by the usual ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... the infinite and absolute as ordinarily understood are tiresome because they are unmeaning, but there is no peculiar sanctity or mystery in them. We might as well make an infinitesimal series of fractions or a perpetually recurring decimal the object of our worship. They are the widest and also the thinnest of human ideas, or, in the language of logicians, they have the greatest extension and the least comprehension. Of all words they may be truly said to be the most inflated with ...
— Sophist • Plato
... astonishingly advanced civilization. Until recent times, for instance, the Phoenicians had been credited with the invention of the alphabet. We know now that 1000 years before the Phoenicians began to write the Cretans had evolved a system of written characters—as yet undeciphered—and a decimal system for numbers. A correspondingly high stage of excellence had been reached in engineering, architecture, and the fine arts, and even in decay Crete left to Greece the tradition of mastery in laws ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... believed to have originated the decimal system of arithmetical notation which has been transmitted to us through ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... however, thinks John M. Vernon, of New-Orleans, who, stimulated by the purest secession sentiments, and urged by the most legitimate secession and 'State rights' logic, has developed a new principle of exclusiveness by devising a new system of decimal currency, which he thus recommends to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... discriminate between the exception and the rule by any common-sense deductions. He must have all the authentic, carefully-compiled statistics before he can allow himself to form any opinion. As long as there is the smallest fraction of a decimal unaccounted for in a mathematical way, this individual is inconvincible. These men pride themselves upon being methodically exact; they express their willingness to be convinced if you can present acceptable proofs; but, trying ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... because it showed the value of legislation — the increase in the Cape Province during that period was 8.33 per cent. In Natal, which had a huge — in fact, an overwhelming — native population, curiously enough, the increase was the same, even to the actual decimal figure, viz., 8.33 per cent.: but some allowance must be made, because a large number of Natives were out at work in the mines. Now, in the Transvaal — and in taking the Transvaal figures these did not apply as regarded squatting, because the increase was mainly due to the number ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... Metric System.—This, the simplest decimal system of computation yet legalised is in use in France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, and other parts of Europe, as well as in Chili, Peru, Mexico, &c., and by 27 and 28 Vic., cap. 117, its use has been rendered legal in this ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... more perfect language than their own, which different causes and accidental communication still continue to bring to them;" and he adds that "among the Melanesian islands scarcely one was found by us which did not possess, in some cases still imperfectly, the decimal system of numeration in addition to their own, in which they reckon only ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... our Spring season. Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor, that is to say (dor being Greek for gift) Reapidor, Heatidor, Fruitidor, are Republican Summer. These Twelve, in a singular manner, divide the Republican Year. Then as to minuter subdivisions, let us venture at once on a bold stroke: adopt your decimal subdivision; and instead of world-old Week, or Se'ennight, make it a Tennight or Decade;—not without results. There are three Decades, then, in each of the months; which is very regular; and the Decadi, or Tenth-day, shall always be 'the Day of Rest.' And the Christian ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... like a 't' doesn't count for much, not any more than a decimal point. It doesn't make any difference whether a decimal point is placed before or after a figure, you know. It's only ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... arithmetic, but without detail, may now be given to him, as it will not appear extraordinary to him that a unit should represent ten by having its place, or column changed; and nothing more is necessary in decimal arithmetic, than to consider that figure which represented, at one time, an integer, or whole, as representing at another time the number of tenth parts into which that whole ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... in their desire to promote the extension of the decimal system, had ordered the construction of logarithmical tables of vast extent; but the great labour and expense involved in the undertaking prevented the design from being carried out. It was reserved ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... note, as he begins to feel at ease in the honorable pillory to which we have called him—puts his hands into his pockets. The gesture supplies us with the first clause of our illustrated lecture. Without his pockets John would be a cipher, and a decimal cipher at that. If some men were not all pocket they would never be Johns, for no Jill would be so demented as to "come tumbling after" them. I have seen a pocket marry off a hump-back, a twisted foot and sixty winters' fall of snow upon the head, while a pocketless ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... ordinary methods of photometry the clearly defined notions of M. Blondel as to the luminous intensity of flux, illumination (eclairement), light (eclat), and lighting (eclairage), with the corresponding units, decimal candle, lumen, lux, carcel lamp, candle per square ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... This may easily be done by counting the number of words in a given passage for the denominator, and the number of Anglo-Saxon or Latin words for the numerator of a common fraction, which may then be reduced to a decimal. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... greater degree made by man himself. The range of fiction extends all the way from complete hallucination to the scientists' perfectly self-conscious use of a schematic model, or his decision that for his particular problem accuracy beyond a certain number of decimal places is not important. A work of fiction may have almost any degree of fidelity, and so long as the degree of fidelity can be taken into account, fiction is not misleading. In fact, human culture is very largely ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... wrist he wore an Osnomian chronometer. This was an instrument resembling the odometer of an automobile, whose numerous revolving segments revealed a large and constantly increasing number—the date and time of the Osnomian day, expressed in a decimal number of the ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... novels. A universal penny post? Cheap telegrams and telephones? Is the Bank of England safe? Are the planets inhabited? Should girls have more liberty? Should they propose? or wear crinolines? Why not have an unlimited paper currency? or a decimal system and coinage? or a one-pound note? Should we abolish the Lords? or preserve the Commons? Why not euthanasia? Should dramatic critics write plays? Who built the Pyramids? Are the English the Lost Ten Tribes? Should we send missions to the heathen? How long will our coal hold out? Who executed ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... calculated by his mathematics that the progress of the species is forty-seven, decimal eight, more rapid than it was thirty-five ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the later millenniums B.C. the Chinese were in many points ahead of the Babylonians and Egyptians. They had made earlier predictions of eclipses and more accurate observations of the distance of the sun from the zenith at various places. They had, too, seen the advantages of a decimal system both in weights and measures and in the calculations of time. But no Greek genius came to build the house with the bricks that they had fashioned, and in spite of the achievements of the Chinese they remained until our own day the type in the world of a settled ...
— Progress and History • Various
... some Parsi ladies rather better looking than I had already seen. One was really beautiful, allowing a decimal point off her nose. This beauty moved briskly and firmly and had eyes to see and be seen. Many of them have slightly hen-like expressions and wear glasses and carry their shoulders too high. As they are the only native women who appear in public they naturally draw your attention. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... The decimal system of coinage was introduced in 1859; this, of course, as is well known, necessitated a ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... Thorndike was the coefficient of correlation, which shows the amount of resemblance or association between any two things that are capable of measurement, and is expressed in the form of a decimal fraction somewhere between 0 and the unit 1. Zero shows that there is no constant resemblance at all between the two things concerned,—that they are wholly independent of each other, while 1 shows that they are completely dependent on each other, a condition that rarely exists, of course.[4] ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... "Do you seek to bribe a Roman Senator with a penny whistle? Why, boy, do you parade your paltry wealth, which, expressed in mills, will not cover ten decimal places, before the eyes of a man who measures the planets in their orbits, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... this morning at thirty- three decimal one. As a consequence it is freezing in the shade, but it is thawing in the sun. There is a certain amount of snow on the ground, but of course not too much. The air is what you would call humid, but not disagreeable to the touch. Where I am ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... forward, bending his head low over the fringe; she could not see his face. "I had inflammation of something or other, and I went partially off my head—got out of bed and walked about in an east wind with a temperature of a hundred and two, decimal point nine." ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... seems to be using the European decimal point ",", in the metric measurements, and the American decimal point ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... offered, and the reports of the Estates Commissioners prove that these have been fulfilled so exactly that, in the case of second term rents, landlords and tenants have obtained average incomes and reductions that differ only by a decimal from the mean advocated ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... year he had spent on the preliminary survey, he had assessed this cultural equation to the last decimal point of surety. He had absolute faith in these people's superstitions. He knew what to expect; but somewhere the equation had been off. He should have chosen a quieter event, he guessed. The audience had been too well schooled in ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... give an easy example, can remember the value of the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of the circle beyond four places of decimals, or at most six—3.141592. Here is the value to 108 decimal places: ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... results, and hence it is now our custom to obtain the highest grade commercial alcohol, determine the specific gravity accurately, and burn this material. We use the Squibb pyknometer[28] and thereby can determine the specific gravity of the alcohol to the fifth or sixth decimal place with a high degree of accuracy. Using the alcoholometric tables of Squibb[29] or Morley,[30] the percentage of alcohol by weight is readily found, and from the chemical composition of the alcohol can be computed not only the amount of carbon dioxide and water-vapor ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... flight resumed. Monied Interest has come into my carriage. Says the manner of refreshing is 'not bad,' but considers it French. Admits great dexterity and politeness in the attendants. Thinks a decimal currency may have something to do with their despatch in settling accounts, and don't know but what it's sensible and convenient. Adds, however, as a general protest, that they're a revolutionary people ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... about him," I can hear A.G.4 remarking to M.S.19 (decimal 9 recurring) as they met in the corridor on their way to lunch, "but I find him a patient, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... of a uniform standard of coinage, weights, and measures. In two years a mint was duly established after an able report from Hamilton, and out of his efforts and those of Jefferson came our decimal system. There was debate over the devices on the coins in which the ever-vigilant Jeffersonians scented monarchical dangers, but with this exception the country got its uniform coinage peacefully enough. The weights and measures did not fare so well. ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... "water" also meant "salt made from water," from which it might be inferred that the water with which they were familiar was saltwater. It is evident they manufactured salt by evaporating salt water. They possessed boats and ships. They had progressed so far as to perfect "a decimal system of enumeration, in itself," says Max Mueller, "one of the most marvellous achievements of the human mind, based on an abstract conception of quantity, regulated by a philosophical classification, and yet conceived, nurtured, and finished before ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... sisters of about one hundred and fifty pounds each, her matrimonial chances would have greatly increased; for however it may have been in years past, this putting two volumes into one is not at all popular at the present duo-decimal time. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... than common. He has been through the twelve first books of Homer, but, as 't is more than a year since he recited that author, am afraid he has lost the greater part of what he then understood pretty well. In Arithmetic, vulgar and decimal, he is well versed. I have likewise taught him Trigonometry, Altimetry, Longimetry, Navigation, Surveying, Dialing, and Gauging. He has been through Martin's 'Philosophical Grammar' twice,—the greater ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... off a string of numbers so fast that he missed them, and was still going into the far decimal ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... British Almanack, to which he contributed without fail one article each year from 1831 up to 1857 inclusive. In these carefully written papers he treats a great variety of topics relating to astronomy, chronology, decimal coinage, life assurance, bibliography and the history of science. Most of them are as valuable now as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the calendar on a decimal basis seems a simple enough matter at first sight. But even here there are details that will have ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... must; log her ten-four." A poor tail to our beautiful kite. Ten-four meant ten and a half; for in those primitive days knots were divided into eight fathoms. Now they are reckoned by tenths; a small triumph of the decimal system, which may also carry cheer to the constant ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... conveniently weighed in a decimal scale provided with a metal cage for their reception instead of the ordinary pan (Fig. 166). Mice and rats are weighed in a modification of the letter balance, weighing to 250 grammes, which has a conical ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... into proper conjunction with the solar year, and there are grounds for believing that prior to the division of the year into twelve parts, there was a year of ten months corresponding to a simpler, perhaps a decimal, system, which appears to have preceded the elaborate ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... these days, every clever invention in the realm of machinery, is forthwith saddled with an impossible name. If it had not been easy to clip the term "automobile" down to the working stub "auto," the machine would never have run our streets. Again, the decimal system is conceded to be far ahead of the asinine "five and one-half yards make one rod, pole or perch"; the only reason why the commonsense thing does not supersede the foolish one is that the sensible measurement has the fool tag on it. Who could imagine ever going into a store ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... them with his head on one side. He was rather proud of them, seeing he had utterly forgotten now how to work decimal fractions, and could not have done a quadratic ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... only general reports were presented, no discussions took place, no fresh proposals were mooted; and so he sat and heard how this department or that was extending its beneficent operations, how statistics were completing to their last decimal places the prognostications of experts, and how along with these things imports and exports were balancing, trade declining, education advancing, and strikes growing every day more formidable and ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... soil of St. Mary country, Maryland, to be valued at $1 to $3 an acre, and the same kind of land in Prince George county, adjoining the District of Columbia, to be worth $1.50 to $5; but do you not know the American evolutional movement could easily move all those decimal points two places and at once make those values read from $100 to $500 an acre. And likewise, it would be a very simple matter to change the yield of corn in Georgia from eleven bushels per acre and have it read one ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... on the decimal system, so long in use between England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, will be extended next year, by agreement, to Spain, Russia, Denmark, and Greece. It is wonderful how our fathers, even almost down to the present generation, were satisfied with any scheme of weights and ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... city,—especially if you can wear with it a broad straw hat and a background of maple trees and the green grass of a tennis court. And if you remember, too, that these are cultivated girls who have all been to the Mariposa high school and can do decimal fractions, you will understand that an Algerian corsair would sharpen his scimitar at ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... objects were used, e.g., a grain, or a scruple, Lat. scrupulus, "a little sharpe stone falling sometime into a man's shooe" (Cooper), for very small things, a stone for heavier goods. Gk. {drachma}, whence our dram, means a handful. Our decimal system is due to our possession of ten digits, or fingers, and calculation comes from ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley |
