On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 07:25:08 -0800 (PST), Andrew Stiller wrote:

> An order of magnitude means a factor of 10.

I hate to be technical, but an order of magnitude means a factor of X, where X
is any number you choose (including "real" & "imaginary" numbers). FWIW: I just
verified this with my Websters Collegiate, which defines an order of magnitude
as a multiple of a "standard unit".

Ten is a frequent choice for X, but in computers, 2 is more often the unit of
choice, and I would heartily concur with David's statement if X is 2. If X is
10, then perhaps a better phrase would have been "a few orders of magnitude."

Anyway, the whole thing is a nitpick. The only reason word processing docs are
as complex as they are is due to the feature bloat of contemporary word
processors. Music notation has several additional dimensions of information than
text, so one might indeed argue that it is 100,000 times more complex.

--
Robert Patterson

http://RobertGPatterson.com
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