Personally, I like the convention: decimal : ordinal : cardinal 0 : zero : first 1 : one : second 2 : two : third ...
And while this is not the only convention that can be used, I think it's probably also important to emphasize that people do use different conventions at times. Another classic case where these sorts of distinctions can be important is "clock arithmetic". -- Raul On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 4:00 PM, Dan T. Abell <dab...@txcorp.com> wrote: > Yes, you're quite right about that. Which would explain > why I scrapped my initial (zeroth?) answer for one that > tried to coney a sense of delight in Henry's notation > as a tool of communication (as opposed to being perfectly > accurate). > > Cheers, > -Dan > > On 17 Dec 2011, at 13:50, Bo Jacoby wrote: > >> That does not make the first problem 'problem 0'. Henry's problems are >> items, not in-betweens. >> >> >> >> >>> ________________________________ >>> Fra: Dan T. Abell <dab...@txcorp.com> >>> Til: Programming forum <programming@jsoftware.com> >>> Sendt: 21:21 lørdag den 17. december 2011 >>> Emne: Re: [Jprogramming] J Midterm exam 2011 >>> >>> Ahhh, yes. But what a great way to emphasise that we >>> begin at zero. We begin our first trip about the sun at >>> age zero. Before the baker add that first donut, the box >>> contains zero donuts. ... >>> >>> We programmers train ourselves (and future programmers) >>> to count the jumps, use indices to label the in-betweens >>> (including that pesky leading "in-between" we call '0'), >>> and then work to catch all our off-by-one errors. >>> >>> -Dan >>> :-P >>> >>> On 17 Dec 2011, at 12:54, Bo Jacoby wrote: >>> >>>> when kids count they still say: one two three >>> >>> -- >>> Dan T. Abell :: dabell at txcorp dot com :: 303.444.2452 >>> Tech-X Corp., 5621 Arapahoe Ave, Ste A, Boulder CO 80303 >>> http://www.txcorp.com :: 303.748.6894/c 303.448.7756/fx >>> >>> >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >>> >>> >>> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > -- > Dan T. Abell :: dabell at txcorp dot com :: 303.444.2452 > Tech-X Corp., 5621 Arapahoe Ave, Ste A, Boulder CO 80303 > http://www.txcorp.com :: 303.748.6894/c 303.448.7756/fx > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
