"Decimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reckoning lay. These things the strangers probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic, but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of sixty years. This was probably the ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... excess, never to excess. I never see Dodey lit up but once, and that was in Dayton, Ohio, the night we played to the janitor of the hall and his four children. When we came to the place where Dodey is blindfolded and does the decimal fractions stunt on the blackboard the janitor's oldest child fooled Dodey into doing all next week's lessons in arithmetic and Dodey fretted over ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... ready for the stop watch, which, to save clerical work, should be provided with a decimal dial similar to that shown in Fig. 4. The method of using this and recording the times depends upon the character of the time observations. In all cases, however, the stop watch times are recorded in the columns headed "Time" at the top of the right-hand ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... for bishop will also fall off, Till the tithe of one, taken in kind be enough. But, as fractions imply that we'd have to dissect, And to cutting up Bishops I strongly object. We've a small, fractious prelate whom well we could spare, Who has just the same decimal worth, to a hair, And, not to leave Ireland too much in the lurch. We'll let her have Exeter, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... a man had invented arithmetic, algebra, or the decimal system, he would have obtained no patent; but Bareme would have had a right of property in his Computations. Pascal, for his theory of the weight of the atmosphere, would not have been patented; instead of him, a glazier would ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... constitutions to grapple with, ten sets of garments to provide, ten series of ailments to combat, ten—no, let me see, two hundred and forty teeth to take to the dentist, not to mention characters and consciences in all their developments and phases, rising, on this appalling decimal system of yours, to regions of ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... noon, and night—in fact, every time when I could snatch a few minutes. I really believe that at one time I could have repeated the whole of the book from memory. Now I found the value of arithmetic, and set to work in earnest on proportion, vulgar and decimal fractions, and, in fact, everything in school work that I could turn to account in the science of chemistry. The result of this sudden application was that I was seized with an illness. For some months I had incessant ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... was secretary of the University of the State of New York, completely reorganizing the state library, which he made one of the most efficient in America, and establishing the system of state travelling libraries and picture collections. His "Decimal System of Classification" for library cataloguing, first proposed in 1876, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins, whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew, too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously determined by law, and that the diameters of the silver coins representing five ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... cents, and is worth itself 4s. 2d. Thus each cent represents one halfpenny; twenty-five cents, roughly one shilling; and the English sovereign is generally worth $4.85, generally written $4^85, and read four dollars eighty-five cents. This decimal system is most convenient for all calculations. I may give one example. Suppose the exchange to be as above, L1 $4.85, and I want to send the equivalent of L210 to America; I simply multiply 485 by 210 and divide the product by 100; practically cut off the two last figures ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... means (if it be justified) that it is not a human being at all, but a mere embodiment of two or three characteristics which are fully displayed within the first ten minutes, and then keep on repeating themselves, like a recurrent decimal. Strong theatrical effects can be produced by this method, which is that of the comedy of types, or of "humors." But it is now generally, and rightly, held that a character should be primarily an individual, and only incidentally (if at ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... not expecting such a thing, as being past the age of child-bearing, for she was ninety years old, and Abraham a hundred; so that this son was born to them both in the last year of each of those decimal numbers. And they circumcised him upon the eighth day and from that time the Jews continue the custom of circumcising their sons within that number of days. But as for the Arabians, they circumcise after the thirteenth year, because Ismael, the founder of their nation, who ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... known to walk forty-eight hours at a stretch, and to pump ninety-six. His life is arduous and full of peril. A mistake in the working of a sum may keep him digging a fortnight without sleep. A repeating decimal in ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... merchants but in many private houses. It consists of a wooden frame ordinarily a foot long and six inches wide. There are ten metal wires strung across this frame, and ten balls of wood on each wire. The Russian currency is a decimal one, and by means of this machine computations are carried on with wonderful rapidity. I have seen numbers added by a boy and a machine faster than a New York bank teller could make the same reckoning. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... be arranged on a decimal system, with intermediate weights for closer working, or they may be made so as to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... the year of the Hegira, cut off six decimals from the product, and add 621.5774. The sum will be the year of the Christian era, and the day of the year will be found by multiplying the decimal figures by 365. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... provision for the introduction of the decimal system into the provincial currency, the taking of a census every ten years, the more satisfactory conduct of parliamentary elections and the prevention of corruption, better facilities for the administration of justice in the two provinces, ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... architectural and free hand College of Applied Science Metal work Wood work Model of steam engine Home-made laboratory apparatus University of the State of New York. Grand prize Bulletins Reports Decimal classification Traveling library for the blind Photographs Large pictures Statistical charts Specimens ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... only complete work, 'An Enquiry concerning the Tenth Horn of the Beast,' even in the abstract of it given by Mr. Hitchcock, would, by a rough computation of the printers, fill five entire numbers of our journal, and as he attempts, by a new application of decimal fractions, to identify it with the Emperor Julian, seems hardly of immediate concern to the general reader. Even the Table-Talk, though doubtless originally highly interesting in the domestic circle, is so largely made up of theological discussion and matters of local or preterite ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... institutions well organised, and that considerable advance had been made in astronomy, chemistry, medicine, and anatomy. Already the Egyptians had divided the year into 365 days and 12 months, and had invented an elaborate system of weights and measures, based on the decimal notation. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... building he jumped with pleasure, for a horse was standing dejectedly before the door. Joy of joys, trade was picking up—a stranger had come to town! Hastening back to the corral, he added a cipher to the posted figure, added a decimal point, and changed the cents sign to that of a dollar. Two dollars and fifty cents was now the price prescribed by law. Returning hastily to the Paradise, he led the animal away, impounded it, and then sat down in front of the corral gate with his Winchester across his knees. Two dollars ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... herself, whatever she may have guessed. As for Hungerford, he was dumb. He refused to consider the matter. But he roundly maintained once or twice, without any apparent relevance, that a woman was like a repeating decimal—you could follow her, but you never could reach her. He usually added to this: "Minus one, Marmion," meaning thus to exclude the girl who preferred him to any one else. When I ventured to suggest that Miss Treherne might also be excepted, he said, with maddening suggestion: "She ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... does not matter to me, but Berbenowitsch is frightfully put out because she is no longer the favourite as she was with Frau Doktor St. The other day it was quite unpleasant in the Maths lesson. In the answer to a sum there happened to be 1-3, and then the Nutling asked what 1-3 would be as a decimal fraction; so we went on talking about recurring [periodic] decimals and every time she used the word period, some of the girls giggled, but luckily some of them were Jews, and she got perfectly savage and simply screamed at us. In Frau Doktor St's lesson in the First, ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... answers, agreeing with each other, to 50 places of decimals. In 1848, I repeated the proposal, requesting that 50 places might be exceeded: I obtained answers of 75, 65, 63, 58, 57, and 52 places. But one answer, by Mr. W. Harris Johnston,[144] of Dundalk, and of the Excise Office, went to 101 decimal places. To test the accuracy of this, I requested Mr. Johnston to undertake another equation, connected with the former one in a way which I did not explain. His solution verified the former one, but he was unable to see the connection, even when his result was obtained. My reader ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... text-book on arithmetic employing the Arabian or Indian figures (those at present in use), and the decimal system, is that of Avicenna, an Arabian physician who lived in Bokhara about A.D. 1000. It was found in manuscript in the library at Cairo, Egypt, and contains, besides the rules for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, many peculiar properties of numbers. It was not until the ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and most physicists utilize in the ordinary methods of photometry the clearly defined notions of M. Blondel as to the luminous intensity of flux, illumination (eclairement), light (eclat), and lighting (eclairage), with the corresponding units, decimal candle, lumen, lux, carcel lamp, candle per ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... the great Indian Remedy made from a prairie herb revealed by the Great Spirit in a dream to his favorite medicine men, the great chiefs McGarrity and Siberstein, bottlers, Chicago. And the other was a frivolous system of pick-pocketing the Kansasters that had the department stores reduced to a decimal fraction. Look ye! A pair of silk garters, a dream book, one dozen clothespins, a gold tooth, and 'When Knighthood Was in Flower' all wrapped up in a genuine Japanese silkarina handkerchief and handed to the handsome lady by Mr. Peters for the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... in China; in Dagroian; by the Battas. —— burning of the, see Cremation. eating the, see Cannibalism. De Barros, on Java; Singhapura; Janifs. Debt, singular arrest for. Decima, or Tithe on bequest. Decimal organisation of Tartar armies. Decius, Emperor. Deghans, Dehgans. Dehanah, village. Deh Bakri. De la Croix, Petis. Delhi, Sultans of. D'Ely, Mount, see Eli. Demoiselle Crane, anthropoides virgo. Deogir. Derbend, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... about him," I can hear A.G.4 remarking to M.S.19 (decimal 9 recurring) as they met in the corridor on their way to lunch, "but I find him a patient, well-behaved ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... which constitutes matter at all; it is the character of the vibrations which constitutes the particular kind of matter. (May we imagine that some vibrations vibrate with a rhythm which has a tendency to recur like the figures in a recurring decimal, and that here we have the origin of the ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... decimal ratio of the diameter of a circle to the circumference to which you refer, as a mixed vulgar fraction, and you will have what you ask for, if we understand ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... counting does not imply either the possession or the use of anything that can be really called the mathematical faculty, the exercise of which in any broad sense has only been possible since the introduction of the decimal notation. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Jews, and the Chinese had all such cumbrous systems, that anything like a science of arithmetic, beyond very simple operations, was impossible; and the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the bees will erect a certain number of what are known as transition cells. These must of necessity be irregular in form; but so unerringly accurate are the dimensions of the second and third types that, at the time when the decimal system was established, and a fixed measure sought in nature to serve as a starting-point and an incontestable standard, it was proposed by Reaumur to select for this purpose the cell ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... is in the exact sciences that the Arabs seem to have met with the greatest success. The Arabic numerals, probably brought from India to Bagdad, led to a new and larger use of arithmetic. The decimal system and the art of figures were {311} introduced into Spain in the ninth century, and gave great advancement in learning. But, strange to relate, these numerals, though used so early by the Arabs in Spain, were ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... words for hand. The sixth count begins with the little finger of the left hand, and the tenth reaches the thumb. The eleventh count begins with the little finger of the right hand again, and so the count continues. The Igorot system is evidently decimal. One man, however, invariably recorded his eleventh count on his toes, from which he returned to the little finger of his right hand for the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... "Do you seek to bribe a Roman Senator with a penny whistle? Why, boy, do you parade your paltry wealth, which, expressed in mills, will not cover ten decimal places, before the eyes of a man who measures the planets in their orbits, and close ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... not approve of this, though other authorities give it as the rule. It is probably better to use the period in spite of its use as a decimal point, which use was probably the motive for seeking something else to use in writing time indications. In railroad printing the hour is often separated from the minutes by a simple space without ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... characters on the same tablet, according to the relative importance of the text, show a striving after clearness and method such as can by no means be said to be a characteristic of Classical Greek inscriptions.'[*] A decimal system of numbers was in use, the highest single amount referred to being 19,000, and percentages were evidently well understood, as a whole series of tablets ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... {181} The masters pretend, for the most part, to teach boys Latin, by way of teaching them English, but without almost ever accomplishing it. In arithmetic, the common rules are taught, but scarcely ever decimal fractions, and almost never book-keeping, so useful ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... multiply your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer,—which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The booby has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net integer quotient so much ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... line, under the title, was plainly the issue number and date; enough things had been found numbered in series to enable her to identify the numerals and determine that a decimal system of numeration had been used. This was the one thousand and seven hundred and fifty-fourth issue, for Doma, 14837; then Doma must be the name of one of the Martian months. The word had turned up several times before. She found herself puffing furiously on her cigarette ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... stated with the problem or may be found in the earlier text. In the calculations from which the answers are derived, the atomic weights given on page 195 have been employed, using, however, only the first decimal but increasing this by 1 when the second decimal is 5 or above. Thus, 39.1 has been taken as the atomic weight of potassium, 32.1 for sulphur, etc. This has been done merely to secure uniformity of treatment, and the student should remember ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... language than their own, which different causes and accidental communication still continue to bring to them;" and he adds that "among the Melanesian islands scarcely one was found by us which did not possess, in some cases still imperfectly, the decimal system of numeration in addition to their own, in which they reckon ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... principal ledger and found that, leaving the high figures out of the question, very stupid mistakes in the additions had been made. Evidently his wife knew nothing of denominate quantities or decimal fractions. This unheard of cheating of the servants must certainly lead ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... advanced so far in the knowledge of numbers, as to have distinctive names for the ten units, and for an hundred and a thousand, with all the intermediate numbers compounded of decimal terms. To preserve the memory of their transactions, they used a bunch of threads of several colours called pron, similar to the quippo of the Peruvians, oh which they cast a number of knots according to circumstances. The subject was indicated by the colour of the threads, and the knots ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... feet and Metres English feet and Metres English feet and decimal parts decimal parts ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... atom. The German mind, more than any other, has done away with this piece of egotism. Purbach and Mullerus, in the fifteenth century, contributed most to the advancement of astronomy in their day. To the latter the world is indebted for the introduction of decimal fractions, which completed our arithmetical notation, and formed the second of the three steps by which, in modern times, the science of numbers has been so greatly improved; and yet both of these men believed in the most childish ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... order to get at the additional number of hands necessary to man properly the powder division and the divisions of the Master and Surgeon, which additional number is to be called B, multiply A by the decimal— ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... "is the ancient Egyptian word for 'little,' 'Ket.' The next, below, written in two lines, is 'Samaris,' a proper name—the name of a woman. Under that, again, is the symbol for the number 18; the decimal sign, ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... hundredfold, but no adequate labour-saving machinery has been introduced into the counting-house, where the value of these transactions has to be recorded and adjusted. The simple and scientific method of computation by what is called the decimal system, is used at this moment, we are told, by more than half the human race. Not only has it been by law established in most of the countries of Europe, but throughout the great empires of China and Russia; it is penetrating the Ottoman Empire; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... circumference is estimated to be three decimal one four one five nine of its diameter, a fixed relation indicated by the Greek letter pi. If you like we will tell you what pi ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... Spring season. Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor, that is to say (dor being Greek for gift) Reapidor, Heatidor, Fruitidor, are Republican Summer. These Twelve, in a singular manner, divide the Republican Year. Then as to minuter subdivisions, let us venture at once on a bold stroke: adopt your decimal subdivision; and instead of world-old Week, or Se'ennight, make it a Tennight or Decade;—not without results. There are three Decades, then, in each of the months; which is very regular; and the Decadi, or Tenth-day, shall always be ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... man-killing work about the place, and there is now very little of it. And usually it so works out that adopting the way which is easier on the men also decreases the cost. There is most intimate connection between decency and good business. We also investigate down to the last decimal whether it is cheaper to make ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... probability, that it has been judged proper to adopt what he has added. The thread of the discourse will be unbroken, and the reader, it is hoped, will prefer a regular continuity to a mere vacant space. The inverted comma in the margin of the text [transcriber's note: not used, but numbered with decimal rather than Roman numerals] will mark the supplemental part, as far as section 36, where the original proceeds to the end of the Dialogue. The sections of the Supplement will be marked, for the sake of distinction, with figures, instead of the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... no sum without an addition. You get an endless decimal fraction for quotient when your division does not work out evenly. I have ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... writing and does not know how to read. His "letters" and his "contracts" are material objects in the shape of bolos and other things, sent from one person to another with a verbal message, or strips of rattan with knots. His method of counting is decimal, and comprehends all numbers up to a hundred, though I am inclined to think that this last number represents ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... dividend, divisor, factor, quotient, submultiple[Math]; fraction, rational number; surd, irrational number; transcendental number; mixed number, complex number, complex conjugate; numerator, denominator; decimal, circulating decimal, repetend; common measure, aliquot part; prime number, prime, relative prime, prime factor, prime pair; reciprocal; totient[obs3]. binary number, octal number, hexadecimal number[Comp]. permutation, combination, variation; election. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reports were presented, no discussions took place, no fresh proposals were mooted; and so he sat and heard how this department or that was extending its beneficent operations, how statistics were completing to their last decimal places the prognostications of experts, and how along with these things imports and exports were balancing, trade declining, education advancing, and strikes growing every day more formidable ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... estimate its absolute weight. But now with the atom of hydrogen dissected, so to speak, and found to consist of 18 somethings, while the atom of oxygen consisted of 290 of the same things, the sixteen to one relationship reappears: 290 divided by 18 gives us 16 and a minute decimal fraction. Again the nitrogen number divided by 18 gives us 14 and a minute fraction as the result, and that is the accepted atomic weight of nitrogen. This gave us a glimpse of a principle that might run all through the table of atomic weights. For reasons having to do with ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... daily ration Of catalogue vexation, And endless botheration With ceaseless complication Of decimal notation, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... him, put down a peseta,[2] and received much change in greasy bronze. "Dos reales" was the price of that piece of lavish entertainment, the old twopence-halfpenny still holding sway in out-districts against the more modern decimal notation. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... the necessity of adhering to the precepts of the sacred books. Science was monopolized by the priests; and it is said that by them the King was regularly sworn to retain the old and unintercalated year. The want of decimal notation, and the consequent clumsiness of the system of numeration, would go far to preclude the improvement of arithmetic, or any ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... of another way, Jim, the meeting is still open." Garlock was wiping his eyes. "But it'll have to be a dilly. I'm not exactly enamored of Lola's idea, either, but as the answer it's one hundred percent to as many decimal places as you want to ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... faint dividing line between astronomy and mathematics, as between medicine and natural history. John of Seville was a notable mathematician, the compiler of a practical arithmetic, the first to make mention of decimal fractions, which possibly may have been his invention, and in the Zohar, the text-book of mediaeval Jewish mysticism, which appeared centuries before Copernicus's time, the cause of the succession of day and night is stated to be the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... practice and the most accurate chronometric reckoning, old Mr. Beirne timed his proceedings to a decimal. The last line of the slow-read poem died in a deafening uproar without. Every bell in the city, it seemed, every whistle and chime, every firecracker and penny-trumpet and cannon (there was but one), ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... karafo. Decapitate senkapigi. Decay kadukeco. Decaying kaduka. Decease (v.) morti. Deceit artifiko—eco. Deceive trompi. Deceived, to be trompigxi. December Decembro. Decent deca. Deception trompo. Decide decidi. Decided decida. Decimal decimalo. Decipher decxifri. Decisive decidiga. Deck (adorn) ornami. Deck (ship) ferdeko. Declaim deklami. Declaration deklaracio. Declaration (of love) amesprimo. Declare sciigi, anonci. Declension deklinacio. Decline ekfinigxo. Decline (health) ekmalfortigxi. Decline ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the simplest decimal system of computation yet legalised is in use in France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, and other parts of Europe, as well as in Chili, Peru, Mexico, &c., and by 27 and 28 Vic., cap. 117, its use has been rendered legal in this country. As our local trade with the above and other ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... are not actually those just mentioned. The clown that has a 9 on his body is portrayed just at the moment when two balls which he is juggling are in mid-air. The positions of these balls clearly convert his figure into the recurring decimal .[.9]. Now, since the recurring decimal .[.9] is equal to 9/9, and therefore to 1, it is evident that, although the clown who bears the figure 1 is absent, the man who bears the figure 9 by this simple artifice has for the occasion ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... desire to promote the extension of the decimal system, had ordered the construction of logarithmical tables of vast extent; but the great labour and expense involved in the undertaking prevented the design from being carried out. It was reserved for Mr. Babbage to develope the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... with a touch of severity) that Science apprehends no decimal of a second adequate to note, on the limitless circle of Time, the briefness of a centenarian's life; and yet the giddiest pitch of human effrontery dares not carry beyond the incident of death any vestige of a social code now accepted as good ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... given you. I remember one lightning calculator I had working for me, who would catch my questions hot from the bat, and fire back the answers before I could get into position to catch. Was a mighty particular cuss. Always worked everything out to the sixth decimal place. I had just about concluded he ought to have a wider field for his talents, when I asked him one day how the hams of the last week's run had been averaging in weight. Answered like a streak; but it struck me that for hogs which ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... off a string of numbers so fast that he missed them, and was still going into the far decimal places when ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... intuition, as textures, and tastes, and colours are learnt. Employing the ball-frame for first lessons in arithmetic exemplifies this. It is well illustrated, too, in Professor De Morgan's mode of explaining the decimal notation. M. Marcel, rightly repudiating the old system of tables, teaches weights and measures by referring to the actual yard and foot, pound and ounce, gallon and quart; and lets the discovery of their relationships be experimental. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the minerals into food for animals, so each man converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron; lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; musician,—severally make an easy way for all, through unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is, by secret liking, connected with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter he is, as Linnaeus, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... scruple, Lat. scrupulus, "a little sharpe stone falling sometime into a man's shooe" (Cooper), for very small things, a stone for heavier goods. Gk. {drachma}, whence our dram, means a handful. Our decimal system is due to our possession of ten digits, or fingers, and calculation comes from Lat. calculus, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... must have lived in odd times. In our days he would not have gone far without falling in with a teetotaller, or a decimal coinage man, or a school-for-all man, or a competitive examination man, who would not allow a drayman to lower a barrel into a cellar unless he could expound the mathematical principles by which he performed ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... buildings now are mostly of stone, or of brick covered with plaster. The environs of the city, as you may see from the ship, are very pleasant. Now a word about the money of Sweden. The government has adopted a decimal system, of which the unit is the riksdaler, containing one hundred oere. The currency in circulation is almost entirely paper, though no bills smaller than one riksdaler are issued. The silver coins in use are the half and the quarter riksdaler, ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... the bison, barren-ground caribou, fur seal, and sea birds on their nesting cliffs, to assume such security from their numbers as to ignore man; and all such cases are highly interesting manifestations of the influence of the fourth law when carried out to six decimal places. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the founder of the present Democratic party in politics; and he gained imperishable fame as the author of the Declaration of Independence. He spent five years in France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin as minister to that country, and he introduced into the United States the decimal system of currency. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... bodies, and we permit the most extravagant variations in the infantile death-rate which the slightest social readjustment would smooth out. We do all this consciously, in full statistical knowledge to a decimal fraction. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... easy example, can remember the value of — the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of the circle—beyond four places of decimals, or at most six—3,141,592. Here is the value to 108 decimal places: ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... form is no bundle of toilet shams, Her beauty no boon of arsenical balms, And she weighs just sixty-two kilograms To a deci-decimal fraction. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... children to count, the decimal system should be kept well in mind, and the teacher should see that thirteen means three-ten, and that the children can touch the three and the ten as they speak the word. Eleven and twelve ought to be called oneteen and twoteen, half in joke. The idea of grouping ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... often arises in people's minds as to the number of rings that they hear. When, therefore, the number of stations to be rung by code exceeds five, it is better to employ combinations of long and short rings, and a good way is to adopt a partial decimal system, omitting the numbers higher than five in each ten, and employing long rings to indicate the tens digits and short rings to indicate the units digit, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... Major, "has calculated by his mathematics that the progress of the species is forty-seven, decimal eight, more rapid than it was thirty-five ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... as he entered the dining-room where the rest of the family were at breakfast. "To-morrow Hugh will be gone,—to-morrow Estella Camilla Wales must pine in vain for her mistress, who will be engrossed in decimal fractions, and to-morrow I must take down from the dusty shelf that dismal old Latin Prose. I wonder who cares for Romulus and ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... height, criminals generally weigh less than normal individuals, whose weight in kilogrammes is given by the decimal figures of his height as expressed ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... calendar on a decimal basis seems a simple enough matter at first sight. But even here there are details that will have ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... final approach to Weald under Calhoun's own control. He'd made brightness-measurements on his previous journey and he used them again. They would not be strictly accurate, because a sunspot could knock all meaning out of any reading beyond two decimal places. But the first breakout was just far enough from the Wealdian system for Calhoun to be able to pick out its planets with the electron telescope at maximum magnification. He could aim for Weald itself, allowing, of course, for the lag in the apparent motion ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... 144; Gell. xi. i; Plutarch, Poplicola, ii). By a similar adjustment the Icelandic law makes twelve rams equivalent to a cow; only in this as in other instances the Germanic law has substituted the duodecimal for the older decimal system. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the language of the resolution what he considers "an unnecessary raison d'etre." But it is just possible that centennial changes rest on a basis of genuine cause and effect quite independent of the decimal system. A century covers the range of three generations, and the generation is a natural, not an arbitrary division of time. What the grandfather practises the son criticises and the grandson amends. This at least ought to commend itself to the consideration ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... symmetrical as that really rises out of the region of science into the region of art. It is a pattern, like the egg-and-dart ornament or the Greek key. One might edge a wall-paper or fringe a robe with a recurring decimal. And while the voter luxuriated in this light exactitude of the numbers, a thought crossed his mind and he almost leapt to his feet. "Why, good heavens!" he cried. "I won that election; and it was won by one vote! But for ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... place where it is exchanged. Bank of England notes or pounds are never worth less than four shillings and twopence, i.e., 480 cents or halfpennies, which, of course, is four dollars and 80 cents, there being 100 cents in a dollar. The decimal currency is extremely simple when once understood. Never less than 4.80 is given for an English pound, but sometimes 4.82 and ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... usually do, would we find out but some fit denominations to signify them by; whereas, in the way we take now to name them, by millions of millions of millions, &c., it is hard to go beyond eighteen, or at most, four and twenty, decimal progressions, without confusion. But to show how much distinct names conduce to our well reckoning, or having useful ideas of numbers, let us see all these following figures in one continued line, as the marks of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... begins to distinguish the degrees of the various attributes, arranging a series of objects in gradation, such as the tablets which show the various degrees of intensity of the same chromatic tone; the bells which produce the notes of an octave, the objects which represent length in decimal proportions, or thickness ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... right in the centre of everything, with that whole half-sphere of sky luring his spirit out toward the infinite, with a pillow that was eight thousand miles thick. If I had been his teacher I might have called him lazy and shiftless as he lay there, because he was not finding how to place a decimal point, I'm glad, on the whole, that I was not his teacher, for I'd have twinges of conscience every time I read one of his big thoughts. I'd feel that, while he was lying there growing big, I was doing my best to make him ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... was not easy for the Romans, partly because they had no figure or other sign for zero, partly because they used a decimal system for counting and a duodecimal for their money, and partly because the Roman system of notation (I, V, X, L, C, D, M) did not adapt itself to quick calculation. Try, for ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... existence of higher rhythmic forms evidence will be afforded by a comparison of the total durations of the first and second five-groups included in the decimal series. Difference of some kind is of course to be looked for; equivalence between the groups would only be accidental, and inequality, apart from amount and constancy, is insignificant. In the results here presented the differentiation ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... her before the rest of the family. Matilda coloured at first, and looked as if she knew nothing of the business; but a distinct answer was given at last, and Isabella's opinions of her sister's abilities rose with amazing rapidity, when she heard that Matilda understood decimal fractions. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... to the solid iron in a single-riveted seam, 1/4 inch plate, 5/8 inch rivet, pitched or spaced 2 inch centers. First reduce all to decimal form, as it simplifies the calculation; 1/4.25 and 5/8 inch rivets will require 11/16 inch hole, this hole is supposed to be filled by the rivet, after driving, consequently this diameter is used ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... replied Jervis. "I have become parasitical on Thorndyke! 'The big fleas have little fleas,' you know. I am the additional fraction trailing after the whole number in the rear of a decimal point." ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... We have a letter, written at the same time by Gerbert, who later on became Pope Sylvester II., to a friend, beseeching him to obtain for him manuscripts of the Latin philosophers and poets. He wrote textbooks of astronomy, geometry and medicine, and introduced the Arabic numbers and the decimal system into Europe. In consequence he, too, was accused of magic and intercourse with Arabian pagans. A chronicler relates that he sold his soul to the devil and became pope through the devil's agency; ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... away in Canada) will be in such a hurry to enlist that he cannot spare the time to think out things carefully, what can he expect? Shortly after midnight of May 7th to 8th a telegram arrived: "Reference my A.B.C. 3535; your X.Y.Z. 97S; their decimal nine recurring. Please cancel all payment of rtn. allce. to Sergeant Blank, Akk. Akk. Akk. This N.C.O. belonging to a Canadian unit should apply direct to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... the metrical table is given, showing lengths in feet and inches, in which only three decimal points ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... discouragement was the order of the day. It was moved and seconded that Coxhead be kicked for having made "amnis" feminine, and having translated the French "impasse" as "instep." And Trimble was temporarily suspended from the service of the Conversation Club because he had put a decimal dot in the wrong place. Public feeling ran so high that any departure from the rules of syntax or algebra was regarded as treason against the house, and dealt ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... glow of triumph in taming such a fraction? "Ladies and gentlemen, the fraction now before you is one that for years defied all efforts of a refining nature: it was, in a word, hopelessly vulgar. Treating it as a circulating decimal (the treadmill of fractions) only made matters worse. As a last resource, I reduced it to its lowest terms, and extracted its square root!" Joking apart, let me thank OLD CAT for some very kind words of sympathy, in reference to a correspondent (whose name ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... unfortunates who swabbed the floors, scraped out the jets, realigned the drive mechanism, or did any other tidying work. Their jobs were never done; they always suffered from the nagging thought that just a little more work might bring the inspection rating up a decimal or two. ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... and subsequent "accounts" are presented by Cooper in tabular form, generally without decimal points in the figures; we have inserted decimals and omitted zeros ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... some attention to this, because it showed the value of legislation — the increase in the Cape Province during that period was 8.33 per cent. In Natal, which had a huge — in fact, an overwhelming — native population, curiously enough, the increase was the same, even to the actual decimal figure, viz., 8.33 per cent.: but some allowance must be made, because a large number of Natives were out at work in the mines. Now, in the Transvaal — and in taking the Transvaal figures these did not ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... out of it better than I had gone in. For Mr Hashford had the charge of all detained boys, and he, good-hearted, Henniker-dreading usher that he was, had spent the three days in drilling me hard in decimal fractions; and so well too, that I actually came to enjoy the exercise, and looked upon the "repeating dot" as a positive pastime. Even Miss Henniker could not rob ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... wear with it a broad straw hat and a background of maple trees and the green grass of a tennis court. And if you remember, too, that these are cultivated girls who have all been to the Mariposa high school and can do decimal fractions, you will understand that an Algerian corsair would sharpen his scimitar at the ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system—tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numerals now. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... he is but the first of our Redeemers, for there is nothing like the decimal system, and you will remember it was in our treaty that in Poictesme all things are to ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... rather better than common. He has been through the twelve first books of Homer, but, as 't is more than a year since he recited that author, am afraid he has lost the greater part of what he then understood pretty well. In Arithmetic, vulgar and decimal, he is well versed. I have likewise taught him Trigonometry, Altimetry, Longimetry, Navigation, Surveying, Dialing, and Gauging. He has been through Martin's 'Philosophical Grammar' twice,—the greater part of which he understands ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... active public generally, as to admit of certain established axioms being taken as established, and placed, as it were, beyond the procrastinating power of debate. It might, for instance, at last be taken for granted that a decimal system was desirable,—so that a month or two of the spring need not be consumed on that preliminary question. But this period had not as yet been reached, and it was thought by the entire City that Mr. Palliser was much too sanguine. It was ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... shutting his eyes. "The earth is the planet on which we live, and is about twenty-five thousand miles round; a decimal fraction is one whose denominator is ten, one hundred, one thousand, or and so ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... by twos. Thus, one is avicho; two, raboi. Above two, so many twos, as four is raboi-raboi; and six, raboi-raboi-raboi. Ten is expressed by spreading both hands, and twenty by bringing fingers and toes together. Thus the Caribs. Decimal numeration is found among all the American aborigines, ancient and modern, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... an odd number," returned Thorwald. "With us the week is the basis of our decimal method of reckoning. We have one hundred minutes in an hour and ten hours ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... all take unity as the unit one and divide by three (representing of course the same formula, viz., mind, soul and body). Expressed by a common fraction it is merely 1/3, which is an incomplete mathematical figure. But take the decimal formula of one divided by three, and we arrive at .3 circulating, i. e., .3333 on to infinity. In other words, the result of the proposition by mathematics is that you divide this formula of spirit, soul, and body into unity, and it remains true ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Thus the zodiac was divided into twelve signs which astronomers of all subsequent times have continued to recognize; and the duodecimal system of counting took precedence with the Babylonian mathematicians over the more primitive and, as it seems to us, more satisfactory decimal system. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... exchange. Silver, then in general use as the measure of value, was adopted as the single standard. The weight and pureness of the dollar were fixed by law. The dollar was made the unit of account and payment, and subdivisions were made in a decimal ratio. This was the dollar of our fathers. Gouverneur Morris, the assistant of the Financier, suggested the decimal computation, and Jefferson the dollar as the unit of account and payment. The board of treasury, which for five years had administered ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... flare, muttered something about "them young devils at their tricks again," and trudged on beer-wards. Never a thought of what day it was, never a thought for Nelson, who preserved their honest pint-pots, to be paid for in honest pence, and saved them from litres and decimal coinage. Nearer at hand, frightened rabbits popped up and vanished with a flick of white tails; scared birds fluttered among the branches, or sped across the glade to quieter sleeping-quarters; but never a bird nor a beast gave a thought to the hero ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... time-worn church at Honedale, her thoughts, it must be confessed, were wandering more to the to-morrow and Aikenside, than to the sacred words her lips were uttering. She knew it was wrong, and with a nervous start would try to bring her mind back from decimal fractions to what the minister was saying; but Maddy was mortal, and right in the midst of the Collect, Aikenside and its owner would rise before her, together with the wonder how she and her grandfather would feel one week from that Sabbath day. Would the desired certificate ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... apprehension of the principle of decimal notation, for instance, to understand that it is purely arbitrary, and that we might in the same way take any other number than ten as the base of a numerical scale,—that we might increase for instance by fives, or eights, or nines, or twelves, just as well ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart |
