Newer milestone thread

[GP2]

Originally Posted by rudy235

Because while 42643801 is an exponent of a proven Mersenne prime, the 41M only reflects "a round number" which it is only to represent a symbolic milestone.
AFAIK

Better to change it to 41,000,000 for consistency with all the sections below.

Or possibly change everything in all sections to "41 million".

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by GP2

Better to change it to 41,000,000 for consistency with all the sections below.

Or possibly change everything in all sections to "41 million".

Scientific notation maybe? 41e6? That's what I personally use in casual conversation, probably because that's what I use in SQL queries.

[GP2]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

Scientific notation maybe? 41e6? That's what I personally use in casual conversation, probably because that's what I use in SQL queries.

Since there's one entry per line, there's no need for horizontal compaction.

Also, the milestones page should be straightforward and understandable by non-participants and non-mathematicians, since reporters or the general public might occasionally view it, for instance when there is a burst of publicity surrounding a new prime discovery.

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by GP2

Since there's one entry per line, there's no need for horizontal compaction.

Also, the milestones page should be straightforward and understandable by non-participants and non-mathematicians, since reporters or the general public might occasionally view it, for instance when there is a burst of publicity surrounding a new prime discovery.

Fine, I'll give it a go. Changed to "million" in the text. I didn't want to do like 41,000,000 since comma/period is a locale specific thing. I was going to do something like "41 000 000" but it just looked weird, especially when the known primes are just lumped together, no thousands separator at all.

Then again, all of the historical entries are using comma for the thousands separator. Hmm... maybe I should be consistently US biased with those. I'll mull it over anyway.

[S485122]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

...
Then again, all of the historical entries are using comma for the thousands separator. Hmm... maybe I should be consistently US biased with those. I'll mull it over anyway.

For dates the site already adopted the international standard of yyyy-mm-dd, one could adopt the international standard for thousands separators in numbers as well : the space separator.

Jacob

(Now if mprime / prime95 could use the yyyy-mm-dd date format on screen, in its logs and result files... But that wish is for another thread.)

[GP2]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

Then again, all of the historical entries are using comma for the thousands separator. Hmm... maybe I should be consistently US biased with those. I'll mull it over anyway.

Actually, the historical entries could use "million" too, since all of them are round numbers. All those zeros are a visual distraction from the truly relevant digits.

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by GP2

Actually, the historical entries could use "million" too, since all of them are round numbers. All those zeros are a visual distraction from the truly relevant digits.

On the https://www.mersenne.org/report_mile...fault.mock.php page I made a few changes...

Changed the thousands separator to a   (thin space) entity and replaced ",000,000" with " million"

Some of that data comes from SQL itself so even on the regular page you'll see some thin spaces.

I should be able to do some stuff in PHP where it's already using the formatting functions to add commas, but I foresee a problem with people who crawl various pages to collect data (rather than using the convenient XML data generated daily, or they crawl huge sections of the exponent report pages and aren't using the XML option there either). Their crawlers/parsers are likely to choke on a bunch of html entities where there used to be commas or no separator at all.

In light of that, I'll take baby steps if using thin spaces as a separator is acceptable (which sounds more and more like a good international standard).

[retina]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

On the https://www.mersenne.org/report_mile...fault.mock.php page I made a few changes...

In some places it says "All exponents below" and others is says "All tests below".

In some places is says "discovered!!" and others is says "discovered!" and others it says "is discovered!".

Re the space separator: Maybe other languages use different conventions for number digit grouping, but I've not seen any English language usage that uses anything but commas. I would have thought that since the site is in English that normal English groupings should apply. That way any automated translations can them reformat accordingly. If you make it non-standard without commas then translations won't recognise the numbers and they won't get reformatted.

[GP2]

Originally Posted by retina

Re the space separator: Maybe other languages use different conventions for number digit grouping, but I've not seen any English language usage that uses anything but commas. I would have thought that since the site is in English that normal English groupings should apply. That way any automated translations can them reformat accordingly. If you make it non-standard without commas then translations won't recognise the numbers and they won't get reformatted.

Why would translations need to reformat the number?

According to Wikipedia, "Thin spaces are recommended for use as a thousands separator for measures made with SI units." I wonder if "dimensionless" is an SI unit.

In addition to "Thin space" at U+2009 or   (e.g., 70 000 000), there is also a "Narrow no-break space" at U+202F (e.g., 70 000 000), if it's necessary to avoid splitting the number across more than one line.

[retina]

Originally Posted by GP2

According to Wikipedia, "Thin spaces are recommended for use as a thousands separator for measures made with SI units."

Well some overzealous editor at WP doesn't mean much to me. WP also recommends using MiB and GiB, but in practice "no one" ever does. I am referring to normal English usage. IME normal English usage uses commas. Plus, exponents aren't "measures made with SI units", they're integers, they aren't measured, they aren't units, so there that problem with using a space (thin or otherwise).

[GP2]

Originally Posted by retina

Well some overzealous editor at WP doesn't mean much to me. WP also recommends using MiB and GiB, but in practice "no one" ever does.

It sounds silly when pronounced out loud, but it's not a problem in print, and actually it does get used. Amazon, for instance, quotes the memory size for its cloud instances in GiB, but the SSD storage size in GB (for example). I imagine that would be because manufacturers quote specs that way. It's nice to know the exact figure and not have to rely on an approximation which diverges ever more, as we start to talk about terabytes and petabytes (e.g., a ten percent difference between a TB and a TiB).

I am referring to normal English usage. IME normal English usage uses commas. Plus, exponents aren't "measures made with SI units", they're integers, they aren't measured, they aren't units, so there that problem with using a space (thin or otherwise).

It looks perfectly fine with thin spaces. There is no loss of clarity. Not sure why you have a bee in your bonnet about this.