[R] Off Topic: teenie weenie numbers -- Was: Precision level

[(Ted Harding)]

There is a story (apocryphal?) about Fred Hoyle, many years ago,
having come to the close of a public lecture about his work in
Cosmology (I seem to recall that it was to the British Astronomical
Association, a society of amateur astronomers, and therefore
knowledgeable). He was taking questions.

A member of the audience asked (words to the effect):

  Can Professor Hoyle explain the reasons why he adopted the
  value 10^1000 [or similar] for the [X] constant?

At which Hoyle grinned, and replied

  "ten to the thousand, ten to the two thousand, ten to the
   three thousand, what difference does it make?"

Ted.


On 31-Mar-10 17:45:54, Dimitri Liakhovitski wrote:
> I spoke with a theoretical physicist and he said he encountered
> 10^-120.
> Has something to do with attempts to describe/explain the universe...
> Dimitri
> 
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Steve Lianoglou
> <mailinglist.honeypot at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Barry Rowlingson
>> <b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> *** COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC ***
>>>>
>>>> Although machine precision (smallest numerical values that can be
>>>> exactly
>>>> represented) is important for numerical calculations, what is the
>>>> smallest
>>>> number that anyone has actually seen describing physical phenomena
>>>> in
>>>> science? I've seen values of ca. 1e-20 or so routinely used in
>>>> physics on
>>>> both size (e.g quarks) and time scales (lifetimes of evanescent
>>>> particles).
>>>> Beyond that about the smallest values I've seen are about 1e-40 or
>>>> so
>>>> seconds in discussions of Big Bang dynamics. Does anyone know of
>>>> smaller
>>>> ones (and those I've quoted might certainly be off somewhat).
>>>
>>> _Hmmm smaller than 1e40... Well, I think I've seen the charge on an
>>> electron given as much, much smaller than that...
>>
>> Here's another: after ~4 years of graduate school, Citibank is
>> starting to send me bank statements using these numbers to quantify
>> the amount of $$ I have in the bank ...
>>
>> "Oh, I just earned $.02 interest? ... thanks for the email
>> notification, Citibank!"
>>
>>>> Just curious. Hope this abuse of the list is not too egregious.
>>>> Ignore if
>>>> you think it is.
>>>
>>> _It's Casual Friday.
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> -steve
>>
>> --
>> Steve Lianoglou
>> Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
>> _| Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
>> _| Weill Medical College of Cornell University
>> Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dimitri Liakhovitski
> Ninah.com
> Dimitri.Liakhovitski at ninah.com
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 31-Mar-10                                       Time: 19:52:35
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------