"Decimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... to mind that no adequate provision has yet been made for the uniformity of weights and measures also contemplated by the Constitution. The great utility of a standard fixed in its nature and founded on the easy rule of decimal proportions is sufficiently obvious. It led the Government at an early stage to preparatory steps for introducing it, and a completion of the work will be a just title to the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... 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
... even with the sun again, for they knew where the error in their 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 ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... dials of our watches simply because the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the second century B. C., accepted the Babylonian system of reckoning time, that system being sexagesimal. The Babylonians knew the decimal system, but for practical purposes they counted by sossi and sari, the sossos representing 60, the saros 60 x 60, or 3,600. From Hipparchus that system found its way into the works of Ptolemy, about ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... awkward units of value for any one accustomed to a decimal coinage: so unreasonable and illogical," the stranger continued blandly, turning over the various pieces with a dubious air of distrust ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... following pages refer to specific cases, but not to the order of their treatment, since the classification is a decimal system used to ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... certainly owes a large debt to the Saracens. They preserved and transmitted much that was valuable in the science of the Greeks and the Persians (see p. 472). They improved trigonometry and algebra, and from India they borrowed the decimal system of notation and ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... 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
... a uniform tael currency; but another decree of May 1910 established a standard currency dollar weighing 72 candareens (a candareen is the 100th part of the tael ounce) and subsidiary coins of fixed values in decimal ratio. This decree properly enforced would introduce a much needed stability into the monetary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... arrange and rearrange in groups. It should have at least over a hundred of these cubes—if possible a thousand; they will be useful as toy bricks, and for innumerable purposes. Our civilization is now wedded to a decimal system of counting, and, to begin with, it will be well to teach the child to count up to ten and to stop there for a time. It is suggested by Mrs. Mary Everest Boole that it is very confusing to have distinctive names for eleven and twelve, which the child is apt to class ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... 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), to say nothing of many an inebriated human voice, hailed in a roaring diapason ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... forward, bending his head low over the fringe; she could not see his face. "I had inflammation of something or other, and I went partially off my head—got out of bed and walked about in an east wind with a temperature of a hundred and two, decimal point nine." ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... quit this subject, that the Martial system of arithmetic differs from ours principally in the use of a duodecimal instead of a decimal basis. Figures are written on a surface divided into minute squares, and the value of a figure, whether it signify so many units, dozens, twelve dozens, and so forth, depends upon the square in which it is placed. The central square of a line represents the unit's place, and is marked by a line drawn ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... operations in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, reduction, simple and compound proportion, and vulgar and decimal fractions, must be thoroughly ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... consisting of three figures, to be multiplied by two figures. She looked upon it, and quivering her fingers in a manner which I thought very pretty, but of which I know not whether it was art or play, multiplied the sum regularly in two lines, observing the decimal place; but did not add the two lines together, probably disdaining so easy an operation. I pointed at the place where the sum total should stand, and she noted it with such expedition as seemed to shew that she had it ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... 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 ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... 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 apply as regarded squatting, because the increase was mainly due to the number of Natives employed ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... 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
... their height, criminals generally weigh less than normal individuals, whose weight in kilogrammes is given by the decimal figures of his height as ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... 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 to whom they owed it ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... on a decimal system, with intermediate weights for closer working, or they may be made so as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... a Kingsley or a Stevenson to make them famous for all time. So with the happenings to be described in this book, many of them historically unimportant compared with the epoch-making events of which they formed a decimal part, but told in plain words; just records of romance on England's sea frontier ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... The decimal system of coinage was introduced in 1859; this, of course, as is well known, necessitated a ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... 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
... be 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
... late in starting; it is well to be precise. A special correspondent who is not precise is a geometer who neglects to run out his calculations to the tenth decimal. This delay of three minutes made the German our traveling companion. I have an idea that this good man will furnish me with some copy, but it is ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... used by Professor Thorndike was the coefficient of correlation, which shows the amount of resemblance or association between any two things that are capable of measurement, and is expressed in the form of a decimal fraction somewhere between 0 and the unit 1. Zero shows that there is no constant resemblance at all between the two things concerned,—that they are wholly independent of each other, while 1 shows that they are completely dependent on each other, a condition that rarely ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... then, don't they use them as such, instead of reckoning them each at twenty-five francs, and then trying to cheat you out of the proper exchange, which is always ten centimes more than the brokers give you? What, we use their beastly decimal system? Lois, I'm ashamed of you. An English girl to turn and rend her native country like that! Francs and centimes, indeed! Fancy proposing it at Peter Robinson's! No, I will not go by the boat, my dear. I hate the Rhine boats, crowded with nasty selfish pigs ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division before we can proceed to teach them measurements or fractions. And without doubt much time is wasted in attempting to teach these subjects without a ready command of the fundamental operations. Further, pupils must know well both common and decimal fractions before they can proceed to percentage. They must know and be able to recognize readily the different "parts of speech" before they can analyze ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Committee's decision to adopt the Dewey Decimal System of Classification, some attempt was made to classify the books ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... left blooming alone," chanted Tom, 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 |
