Ordinal numbers are not considered in J. The expression 2{y should not be read
as "take the second element of y" but as "skip 2 elements and take the left
element of y".
Ordinal Fractions use one-digit ordinal numbers for indexing. There are but
nine one-digit ordinal numbers: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, because 0 is not an ordinal
number, and 10 is not a one-digit number. Digit 0 - not being an ordinal number
- is available to indicate empty digit positions.
Example: The roman numeral MMLIII means (M*2)+(L*1)+(I*3) . It can be encoded
(arabic style) without delimiting spaces: 2001003 . The zeroes in 2001003 mean
that terms involving D C X and V are omitted. Likewise, the ordinal fraction
2001003 means (M=2)*.(L=1)*.(I=3). The zeroes in 2001003 mean that conditions
involving D C X and V are omitted.
Thanks.
Bo.
Den 0:06 lørdag den 26. maj 2018 skrev Jose Mario Quintana
<[email protected]>:
Stopwatches and odometers can also be used to label time intervals to
associate them to events occurring in those intervals and keep track of the
order in which they take place. In fact, conceptual odometers counting
days have been used at least for two millennia and detecting a day when a
big cycle ends and the day when the next begins is extremely hard to miss.
In addition, by starting at 0 when labelling sequential objects the offset
from the anchor is immediately evident; for instance, if the buttons in an
elevator for the floors of the building are labelled: *G (0), 1 ,2, ... and
I pressed 6, to get to the floor where I am then I know that if a fire
alarm goes off I will go down the stairs 6 floors and I will be on the
ground floor. However, if the fire alarm would go off right now in my
building, ... I would do nothing because there are too many damn false
alarms!
In the context of the common English language, there is little doubt that
the ordinal numbers are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, ... However, in another
context (see, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number ) they are 0, 1,
2, ... (, ω, and so on).
Personally, I have no problem relating both by saying 0 is the 1st ordinal
number, 1 is the 2nd ordinal, 2 is the 3rd ordinal, 3 is the 4th ordinal,
etc.
I understand that there could be instances where starting from 1 might be
more desirable; apparently, that is the case for your Ordinal Fractions
where the digit 0 is used for a special purpose (although I cannot see the
difficulty in starting from 0 and using, say, _ for the special purpose).
On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 5:52 PM, Jose Mario Quintana <
[email protected]> wrote:
> :D
>
> It seems that these people like complications. They are not very smart or
> maybe they are... Job security!
>
>
> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 7:14 PM, David Lambert <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Our credit union had used employee numbers for account numbers. But ran
>> out of 5 digit numbers. Did they change our accounts to 0abcde? No!
>> They
>> multiplied 10 leaving us as abcde0.
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
