Creative abuse of SI units
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Some time ago my spouse came home from work (New England Medical Center, hematology lab) talking about seeing a bunch of micromegs in several patient's blood samples. Wait, wait, I said, you saw WHAT!? She was referring to abnormally small megakaryocytes[1]. I of course got tripped up by the meg not being an SI unit at all but rather an adjective denoting small. This got me thinking: Hey, this is a pretty creative combination of prefixes used in a specific way to describe something fairly accurately. I'll use descriptions such as nanolight-second to measure a distance just to prove my geekiness. But I think that pales in comparison to micromegs. Does anyone have other examples? [1] Megakaryocytes are large blood cells normally confined bone marrow. They are too big to escape to the peripheral blood. If they do then you have some real trouble health-wise. I'm not standing on Mt. Stupid saying what that trouble might be because I don't know. And to be honest I'm not qualified to even read the wikipedia article on megakaryocytes.
Disguise the limit
I asked copilot to explain about this (megakaryocyte and micromegs), and got: Certainly! Let's dive into both topics: 1. **Megakaryocytes**: - A **megakaryocyte** is a large bone marrow cell with a lobated nucleus. These cells are responsible for producing **blood platelets** (also known as **thrombocytes**), which are essential for normal blood clotting. - In humans, megakaryocytes typically account for about 1 out of every 10,000 bone marrow cells. However, their numbers can increase significantly during certain diseases. - Structurally, megakaryocytes are much larger than red blood cells (about 10 to 15 times larger). During maturation, they grow in size and replicate their DNA without dividing, a process called **endomitosis**. This results in a large, lobulated nucleus. - The cytoplasm of megakaryocytes contains **α-granules** and **dense bodies**, similar to the platelets they produce. - These cells develop from hematopoietic stem cell precursor cells in the bone marrow, with **thrombopoietin (TPO)** being a key signal for their production. - Abnormal megakaryocyte function can lead to various diseases related to platelet dysfunction¹. 2. **Micromégas**: - **Micromégas** is a 1752 novella by the French philosopher and satirist **Voltaire**. It's considered an early example of **science fiction** and has its place in the history of literature. - The story revolves around the visit to Earth by two extraterrestrial beings: - **Micromégas**, an inhabitant of a planet orbiting the star **Sirius**. He stands 120,000 royal feet tall (about 38.9 km) and has solved over fifty of Euclid's problems. - His companion from the planet **Saturn**, who is much smaller (only 6,000 royal feet or 1.95 km tall) but clever. - Micromégas travels between planets, discussing differences in senses, lifespans, and intelligence. The tale humorously comments on human self-importance and cosmic scale⁶⁷⁸. Feel free to ask if you'd like more details! 😊 Source: Conversation with Copilot, 8/8/2024 (1) what is megakaryocytes?. https://microsoftstart.msn.com/en-us/health/ask-professionals/in-expert-answers-on-bloodcells/in-bloodcells?questionid=quj5pnu8&type=condition&source=bingmainline\_conditionqna. (2) Micromégas - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromégas. (3) Micromégas by Voltaire (1752) — The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/micromegas-by-voltaire-1752/. (4) Micromegas: Voltaire’s Trailblazing Sci-Fi ... - The Marginalian. ht
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Have you ever seen that used in practice? (Also note that Ångstrøm is not an SI unit, even though it is a ten-factor of an SI-unit.) I was surprised to see astronomers referring to the mass of astronomical object in Tg, teragrams. That was clearly a dead serious unit, not meant as any sort of joke, and definitely within SI, just as much as kg. But we tend to use 'ton' rather than Mg (as we really ought to!) and kiloton rather than Gg. I honestly prefer Tg to "thousand kilotons". Student humor is full of 'funny' derived units. Such as "square liter": The floor area covered by beer if you tip over two full glasses.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
Never used it in practice, it was something a teacher at school came up with as an alternative name for an athletics event.
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Some time ago my spouse came home from work (New England Medical Center, hematology lab) talking about seeing a bunch of micromegs in several patient's blood samples. Wait, wait, I said, you saw WHAT!? She was referring to abnormally small megakaryocytes[1]. I of course got tripped up by the meg not being an SI unit at all but rather an adjective denoting small. This got me thinking: Hey, this is a pretty creative combination of prefixes used in a specific way to describe something fairly accurately. I'll use descriptions such as nanolight-second to measure a distance just to prove my geekiness. But I think that pales in comparison to micromegs. Does anyone have other examples? [1] Megakaryocytes are large blood cells normally confined bone marrow. They are too big to escape to the peripheral blood. If they do then you have some real trouble health-wise. I'm not standing on Mt. Stupid saying what that trouble might be because I don't know. And to be honest I'm not qualified to even read the wikipedia article on megakaryocytes.
Disguise the limit
A "dime" is the metric weight of a bag of pot = 10g. A dime is the U.S. coin that equals 10 cents or 1/10 of a U.S. dollar. My English teacher in high school said that the best thing about kids using drugs was that they learn the metric system.
Bond Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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k (lowercase) is kilo, 1000. (K (uppercase) is Kelvin.) M (uppercase) is Mega, 1,000,000. m (lowercase) is milli, 1/1000. G (uppercase) is giga, 1,000,000,000. (g (lowecase) is gram). Ki (Upper-lowercase) is kibi, 1024. Mi (Upper-lowercase) is mebi, 1,048,576. Gi (upper-lowercase) is gibi, 1,073,741,824. The prefixes are valid for any unit, but you often see incorrect use: In economy, you often see KUSD, for 1000 US Dollars, which literally means Kelvin-US-Dollars. The correct use is kUSD. I never saw binary prefixes (Ki, Mi, Gi, ...) used with money. Actually, I never saw them anywhere outside computer contexts. On the other hand, I saw a lot of decimal prefixes in computer contexts - almost all of it incorrect. You frequently see abuse of SI units, e.g. size of data object given in kB. What does sound pressure have to do with object size? (and: 1000 Bel is a sound pressure that would shake your house to gravel.) Maybe the size is even given in Kelvin-Bel, to suggest 1024 (Bel??) rather than 1000. Note that networking people always used decimal prefixes. Besides, they count bits, not bytes. A 64 kbps line is 64,000 bits, not 65536 bits - and far from 65536 bytes! (When phone lines were digitized in the late 1980s in Norway, lots of computer enthusiasts complained to the telco when the didn't get 64 Ki bytes through the line, but only a little over 7.5.) Also - particular attention to the youngsters among you: A byte being 8 bits, and that is final!, is a new phenomenon. I have been working with 6 bit bytes (Univac 1100 series), 7 bytes (DEC-10, DEC-20), 8 bytes (quite a few machines) and 9 bits (also Univac 1100 series). When I got my ham license, the only permitted "digital" (modem signal) format was using 5 bit bytes (Baudot code); I never used that myself. The classical definition of "byte" was the space required to store one printable character. When networking people talk about data sizes (e.g. in protocol definitions), if they are not talking about bits, they use octets to make perfectly sure that there is no confusion. I have seen protocol standards using 'byte' - a clear indication that the standard development has been dominated by young software people rather than by experienced networking people.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
one that annoys me is the use of mc instead of µ such as on tablets - "contains 5mcg" rather than "contains 5µg".
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Some time ago my spouse came home from work (New England Medical Center, hematology lab) talking about seeing a bunch of micromegs in several patient's blood samples. Wait, wait, I said, you saw WHAT!? She was referring to abnormally small megakaryocytes[1]. I of course got tripped up by the meg not being an SI unit at all but rather an adjective denoting small. This got me thinking: Hey, this is a pretty creative combination of prefixes used in a specific way to describe something fairly accurately. I'll use descriptions such as nanolight-second to measure a distance just to prove my geekiness. But I think that pales in comparison to micromegs. Does anyone have other examples? [1] Megakaryocytes are large blood cells normally confined bone marrow. They are too big to escape to the peripheral blood. If they do then you have some real trouble health-wise. I'm not standing on Mt. Stupid saying what that trouble might be because I don't know. And to be honest I'm not qualified to even read the wikipedia article on megakaryocytes.
Disguise the limit
Well, "mega" refers to "large", NOT "small", and yes, neither "micro" nor "mega" in this context has anything to do with SI units, beside that they have a common Greek origin... ("megas"="large"/"mighty", "mikros"="small") that "micromegs" is a rather strange word concontion for "rather small examples of (normally) large blood cells"...
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k (lowercase) is kilo, 1000. (K (uppercase) is Kelvin.) M (uppercase) is Mega, 1,000,000. m (lowercase) is milli, 1/1000. G (uppercase) is giga, 1,000,000,000. (g (lowecase) is gram). Ki (Upper-lowercase) is kibi, 1024. Mi (Upper-lowercase) is mebi, 1,048,576. Gi (upper-lowercase) is gibi, 1,073,741,824. The prefixes are valid for any unit, but you often see incorrect use: In economy, you often see KUSD, for 1000 US Dollars, which literally means Kelvin-US-Dollars. The correct use is kUSD. I never saw binary prefixes (Ki, Mi, Gi, ...) used with money. Actually, I never saw them anywhere outside computer contexts. On the other hand, I saw a lot of decimal prefixes in computer contexts - almost all of it incorrect. You frequently see abuse of SI units, e.g. size of data object given in kB. What does sound pressure have to do with object size? (and: 1000 Bel is a sound pressure that would shake your house to gravel.) Maybe the size is even given in Kelvin-Bel, to suggest 1024 (Bel??) rather than 1000. Note that networking people always used decimal prefixes. Besides, they count bits, not bytes. A 64 kbps line is 64,000 bits, not 65536 bits - and far from 65536 bytes! (When phone lines were digitized in the late 1980s in Norway, lots of computer enthusiasts complained to the telco when the didn't get 64 Ki bytes through the line, but only a little over 7.5.) Also - particular attention to the youngsters among you: A byte being 8 bits, and that is final!, is a new phenomenon. I have been working with 6 bit bytes (Univac 1100 series), 7 bytes (DEC-10, DEC-20), 8 bytes (quite a few machines) and 9 bits (also Univac 1100 series). When I got my ham license, the only permitted "digital" (modem signal) format was using 5 bit bytes (Baudot code); I never used that myself. The classical definition of "byte" was the space required to store one printable character. When networking people talk about data sizes (e.g. in protocol definitions), if they are not talking about bits, they use octets to make perfectly sure that there is no confusion. I have seen protocol standards using 'byte' - a clear indication that the standard development has been dominated by young software people rather than by experienced networking people.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
Units in SPICE (analog design software) can cause some really big mistakes: m = 10^-3 M = 10^-3 MEG = 10^6 meg = 10^6 Kevin
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Some time ago my spouse came home from work (New England Medical Center, hematology lab) talking about seeing a bunch of micromegs in several patient's blood samples. Wait, wait, I said, you saw WHAT!? She was referring to abnormally small megakaryocytes[1]. I of course got tripped up by the meg not being an SI unit at all but rather an adjective denoting small. This got me thinking: Hey, this is a pretty creative combination of prefixes used in a specific way to describe something fairly accurately. I'll use descriptions such as nanolight-second to measure a distance just to prove my geekiness. But I think that pales in comparison to micromegs. Does anyone have other examples? [1] Megakaryocytes are large blood cells normally confined bone marrow. They are too big to escape to the peripheral blood. If they do then you have some real trouble health-wise. I'm not standing on Mt. Stupid saying what that trouble might be because I don't know. And to be honest I'm not qualified to even read the wikipedia article on megakaryocytes.
Disguise the limit
I worked for a gold mining company in my career who used "milli-ounces" for the units of how much gold was in the ore. Gold concentrations are usually reported from the assayers in three decimal amounts. This worked fine. It got rid of any decimals for gold input value for all reserve calculations.
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
In our case many of our computations have more predictable behavior when performed using integral values.
Sure, handling counts may be more predictable. But you are handling counts of 25.4 nm units. Not measurements. I find that conceptually wrong. And your count is not able to handle measurements that is not a whole number of your counting unit. Another thing that surprises me is that you in the English system use a decimal scaling factor. Long time ago, around 1981-82 I was working on an office automation system. We were introducing varying-width typefaces to the document formatting. Relevant printer models had a resolution of 72 dpi, 96 dpi, 144 dpi, 300 dpi, ... So we did all positioning in a grid with a resolution of 1/86400 in. (You had to be one of the insiders to know why this unit was called 'AH' - it was the initials of the guy devising it :-)) Even though an AH has less precision than a micro-inch, it was exact for all the relevant printers, and all the common resolutions came out as a 'round' number of AHs. Yes, we did handle it as an integer value. It wasn't a measurement, it was an index position (or the number of index positions filled) in a virtual point grid on the printing surface. It didn't relate to any hardware measurement. When the document was printed, it was reduced to a smaller resolution value, according to the printer's number of dots per inch. That implied a physical size, but from the software point of view, it was a count/index of a dot position, not a measurement. At that time, I had not developed as strong an awareness about measurements and counts as I have today; that came as a result of a few years of teaching beginner courses in programming, learning how difficult it is for students to grasp the difference between integer and float. When I started referring to them as counts and measurements, the students handled it with much more ease. I have stuck to that since. If it really is a measurement, I represent it as a measurement. If it is e.g. a position index that does not imply a specific measurement value (say, a position on a chess board, which may be small or large), it is a count.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
Count/measure abstraction works until you start falling between the cracks. Float is just another form of digital (discontinuous) number. It just happens to be designed to have high resolution in the 'general use' range. Digital is still just integers however you slice it, and in fact, measurements are also 'just' integers since any measurement is limited by the resolution of the instrument (and likely further hobbled by variations in resolution over the instruments range). Aside, it is interesting to note; (nearly) every 'analog' clock is also digital, being limited by the resolution of the escapement. The use of an 'AH' value is a perfectly acceptable, and common, use of the 'lowest common denominator' to reduce a real world measurement domain to integers suitable for computing. Anyone reading the code or using the system 'simply' has to be made sufficiently aware of the number systems in use and consequences there-of. And there's the rub. The number of humans involved in being computer 'literate' grows exponentially year on year. The task of keeping them on the same conceptual and taxonomic pages has grown similarly to the point that, in my observation, it is now usually the biggest problem of all. Long-winded discourse on simple paradigms being required to 'bring everyone along'. :)
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Count/measure abstraction works until you start falling between the cracks. Float is just another form of digital (discontinuous) number. It just happens to be designed to have high resolution in the 'general use' range. Digital is still just integers however you slice it, and in fact, measurements are also 'just' integers since any measurement is limited by the resolution of the instrument (and likely further hobbled by variations in resolution over the instruments range). Aside, it is interesting to note; (nearly) every 'analog' clock is also digital, being limited by the resolution of the escapement. The use of an 'AH' value is a perfectly acceptable, and common, use of the 'lowest common denominator' to reduce a real world measurement domain to integers suitable for computing. Anyone reading the code or using the system 'simply' has to be made sufficiently aware of the number systems in use and consequences there-of. And there's the rub. The number of humans involved in being computer 'literate' grows exponentially year on year. The task of keeping them on the same conceptual and taxonomic pages has grown similarly to the point that, in my observation, it is now usually the biggest problem of all. Long-winded discourse on simple paradigms being required to 'bring everyone along'. :)
You can't seriously argue that because measurement values have a limited precision (they do when written down on paper, too!), the there is no conceptual conceptual difference between a count and a measurement value. They are conceptually different, even if a given measurement technology does not have infinite precision.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Some time ago my spouse came home from work (New England Medical Center, hematology lab) talking about seeing a bunch of micromegs in several patient's blood samples. Wait, wait, I said, you saw WHAT!? She was referring to abnormally small megakaryocytes[1]. I of course got tripped up by the meg not being an SI unit at all but rather an adjective denoting small. This got me thinking: Hey, this is a pretty creative combination of prefixes used in a specific way to describe something fairly accurately. I'll use descriptions such as nanolight-second to measure a distance just to prove my geekiness. But I think that pales in comparison to micromegs. Does anyone have other examples? [1] Megakaryocytes are large blood cells normally confined bone marrow. They are too big to escape to the peripheral blood. If they do then you have some real trouble health-wise. I'm not standing on Mt. Stupid saying what that trouble might be because I don't know. And to be honest I'm not qualified to even read the wikipedia article on megakaryocytes.
Disguise the limit
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You can't seriously argue that because measurement values have a limited precision (they do when written down on paper, too!), the there is no conceptual conceptual difference between a count and a measurement value. They are conceptually different, even if a given measurement technology does not have infinite precision.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
Sure I can and I do, for the simple reason that, the computer cannot represent real numbers (your notion of a 'measurement') as anything other than integers. The the earlier a developer realizes that, the simpler it is to conceptualize and manage the (many) translations and transforms between the multitudinous real number (measurement or other) domains and integers. :)