On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 12:57:18PM -0800, Tony Lewis wrote: > John J Foerch wrote: > > > It seems that the system of using the metric prefixes for numbers 2^n is a > > simple accident of history. Any thoughts on this? > > I would say that the practice of using powers of 10 for K and M is a > response to people who cannot think in binary.
I would say that the original poster understands what he is saying, and you clearly don't... http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html kilo, mega, giga, tera and many others are standard in SI and widely used in physics, chemistry, engineering by their real meaning (powers of 10). The hole powers of 2 thing is just because 1024 is close to 1000 and computers work in binary, so is logical to think in powers of 2 (so yes, a mere accident of 20th century history). Carlos
