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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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While I personally think it's arbitrary which characters to use as separators I can't follow that logic.
Thinking of sentences, a comma separates stuff that belongs together while a dot is literally a full stop. All of the comma/dot separated parts belong to the same number though. So, why are thousands/millions more closely related than integers/digits?
You said it yourself, "a comma separates stuff that belongs together". The integers. I can type 27000 and its valid, I can space them integers with a comma 27,000 they belong together. Decimals are different to integers, so they are marked with a period, like the end of a sentence (of integers).
You can argue either way honestly, but more of the world use periods for decimal notation. So it would make more sense if we just adopted that (never going to happen though).
27,000 and 1.5
Why do 27 and 000 belong closer together than 1 and 5? Both numbers are incomplete when leaving out a component.
Agreed, it's completely arbitrary.
It's two pretty large groups but you've got India and China, so population wise it's pretty clear. Let's make a deal: we (Europe) switch to the dot as decimal separator if the US switches to metric.
I kinda like laughing at the US for measuring things in AR15s though.
Yes please