Re: Few, Fewer, Fewest

On Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:27:13 +0100, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<athel_cb@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:

On 2007-10-25 19:26:22 +0200, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
[ ... ]



To me, degree of coldness can be expressed as a *negative*
number whose magnitude is equal to the number of degrees
below zero.

Why start at zero?

Is English your first language? If so, I wonder why you
didn't notice that I said "can be", no "has to be".

It's completely arbitrary. Zero on what scale,
anyway? People who live in very cold places would start "cold" at a
different place from where people who live in hot places would put it.
When I was on the Caribbean coast of Colombia 20 years ago everyone
said how lucky we were to have come during a cold spell, but to us 30°C
with humidity near 100% wasn't what we called cold.

(Q. How cold is it? A. It's minus 40.

It's cheating to give that example: -40°C = -40°F

) The
greater the magnitude of that negative number, the colder it
is.

No problem with that. The problem comes with expressing a comparison
between numbers as a ratio when the numbers in question can't be
expressed as ratios except in very special circumstances. If I said
that Stockholm is about twice as far as London that would make
perfectly good sense if I said it to someone in the same room as me,
but it makes no sense at all as a general statement.

If minus 100 is one degree of coldness and minus 200 is
another, then the second is clearly twice the value of the
first and minus 200 is indeed twice as cold as minus 100.

2*-x = -2*x. (Two times minus x equals minus two times x.)

But minus 200 is still less than minus 100.

If A is less than B, and C is positive, then A-C is less
than B-C.

Consider the inequality 100 .LT. 200 . Subtracting 400 from
each side gives -300 .LT. -200 .
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Few, Fewer, Fewest
    ... Why start at zero? ... People who live in very cold places would start "cold" at a different place from where people who live in hot places would put it. ... The problem comes with expressing a comparison between numbers as a ratio when the numbers in question can't be expressed as ratios except in very special circumstances. ... first and minus 200 is indeed twice as cold as minus 100. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
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    (comp.lang.fortran)