Talk:Unit prefix/Archive 1

Archive 1

Name or scope of article is wrong

This article is badly named, and the merging here of Obsolete metric prefixes was wrong.

Prefixes like myria, and like hectokilo- and micromicro-, are not unofficial "SI prefixes". They are not and never have been SI prefixes. They were legitimate prefixes in earlier versions of the metric system.

There could legitimately be an article about expansions which somebody of some credibility has suggested for future expansions of SI. After all, unlike other systems, the metric system is the one which is still fully supported and updated. But that is an entirely different class of prefixes from those which were formerly used, but which nobody claims to be acceptable for use with SI, that nobody is advocating for use with SI.

Either the article should be renamed with a more descriptive, inclusive name, or these prefixes should be put back into two different articles (each of which properly named—the old obsolete SI prefixes was also a totally erroneous name. Gene Nygaard 02:12, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Well, originally there were a bunch of stubs about all the different prefixes. Following a suggestion on Category talk:Bogus SI prefixes, I merged them, and also mentioned myria and myrio (erroneously calling them SI). The double prefixes were added later by others. The merging of myria and myrio was also done by others.

Your main concern is that these prefixes are not in SI. I can see your point, though what I meant when I named the article was indeed that the prefixes weren't in SI. If we are to revise the organization of this section, I think we should make a distinction between units that were never official and those from other systems. First we would mention the prefixes never part of a real system, and after that put obsolete prefixes. Current proposals for expanding SI should go elsewhere (probably the main SI prefix article). How does Non-SI prefixes sound? If you have a better title we can use that. Eric119 03:12, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

That's about the best Idea I could come up with, too. Doesn't seem very elegant, but probably the simplest and clearest way to do it. Maybe clarify a little with Non-SI unit prefix or non-SI measurement prefixes (singular or plural? Generally article titles are singular), because there are lots of prefixes which have nothing to do with units. Without it, lots of people might wonder what "non-SI" means, don't you think? Something that would make the meaning clearer in, for example, a category listing, where there is no surrounding text from which the context can be made clearer, or a "See also" listing which could but usually don't include such explanations. Gene Nygaard 03:32, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. The title of the SI prefix article has the opposite problem, of being too narrow in scope. Many of those prefixes long predate SI, and were and still are used in other systems as well. Gene Nygaard 03:35, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that Non-SI unit prefix is the best title. The SI prefix title is best left as is. I added a sentence to try to make the situation clearer. Eric119 23:49, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Brontobyte

70.177.183.158 19:22, 9 September 2007 (UTC) I take a slight bit of umbrage -- but only the tiniest bit -- at the characterization of 'brontobyte' as a fake term. When a couple of workmates and I first thought up the term in late 1989, the largest officially-named term we could find was exabyte. We started talking about brontobytes when dealing with various software/systems developers we were working with - the really smart ones questioned what the heck we were talking about - but decided early on that trying to fix the name brontobyte on something that was only just larger than an exabyte was not the best use of such a wonderful name. So we decided to make brontobyte a floating point. Once you get to the largest officially-named size for bytes, you can use brontobyte. A great idea, we thought. We still do. Rick K 20:21, 09 September 2007 (UTC)

That actually makes a lot of sense. Can anyone find a proper source? Dark-Fire 21:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't matter if you do or don't:

WP:NOTNEO: Articles on neologisms that have little or no usage in reliable sources are commonly deleted, as these articles are often created in an attempt to use Wikipedia to increase usage of the term. Care should be taken when translating text into English that a term common in the host language does not create an uncommon neologism in English. As Wiktionary's inclusion criteria differ from Wikipedia's, that project may cover neologisms that Wikipedia cannot accept. You may wish to contribute an entry for the neologism to Wiktionary instead.

And there is very little evidence that the term is in actual use. Google has a lot of hits for the word, but almost all of them are about the word, discussing or defining it, rather than actually using it. --Thnidu (talk) 06:05, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

gegobyte

Talking of brontobyte, wotabowt gegobyte ? See http://blog.seagate.com/business/a-gegobyte-hard-drive-would-cover-the-earth-23000000-times-2/ 80.4.63.73 (talk)

Remove the "guacamole" joke

It may be amusing to invent a new "guaca-" prefix, such that a guacamole of molecules is a single molecule - but this is supposed to be a serious encyclopedia. One humorous reference to this unit on the Stanford University website does not make it a noteworthy unit. Currently about half of the opening text in this article is devoted to explaining the guacamole joke, as well as a line in the table. I would vote that we remove it from the opening text and from the table, and perhaps add a short "Humor/Humour" section at the end, if we really want it. --Mtford 09:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This article is not supposed to be about joke prefixes. Eric119 16:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the "gauca" information and prefix, but have left the external link to a page describing the joke. Eric119 00:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

it is also a planet on the edge of our solar sistem

"Nega"?

No source is given for this "nega" prefix. Can anyone find a source for this or should it be erased? Sniffnoy 21:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Original research

There is an awful lot of original research in this article. The "Proposed and unofficial prefixes" section lists prefixes "based on the names of the Marx Brothers" (grouchi-, harpi-, gummo-, chico-, zeppo-). No reference to any authoritative source supplied, of course. And the entire "Proposed systems" section relates to a single page on a personal website. I strongly recommend deleting both of these sections in their entirety unless the proposals can be shown to have serious academic support. Vilĉjo 00:45, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree - clearly sources for a lot of the information cannot be found or are unreliable. I would recommend removing everything in the article for which sources have not yet been found, so the article can be rebuilt with verifiable information only. Dark-Fire 20:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The Marx Brothers prefixes, at least, we can keep. See the Jargon File link at the bottom. Not "authoritative", exactly, but this is a page of non-SI unit prefixes, so that's probably about as good as you're going to get. I'm pretty certain every prefix listed can be found at at least one of the sources listed, though I haven't checked recently. But I'll agree that many of these sources aren't actually worth anything; we should probably clear out all the ones that nobody uses, are essentially hoaxes, or just happened to be suggested by some guy somewhere. Sniffnoy 21:05, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I have to disagree on the Marx Brothers prefixes. Are there any – and I mean even one – serious documented real-world usages of these prefixes? (NB. that's usages, not mentions, i.e. have they been actually employed rather than listed in hypothetical tables.) If not, they're little different from the guaca- prefix mentioned above, something which (as you express it) "just happened to be suggested by some guy somewhere", no matter how many people on Usenet may have been sufficiently amused to say what a great idea it is. Can we really imagine that zeppo- (10^-33) is ever going to be used when we already have the official zepto- (10^-21)? Empto-, hepa-, otta-, myrio- and myria-, on the other hand, all have actual histories of usage, however tenuous or temporary. Pretty much all the rest can and should be ditched, IMO. Vilĉjo 00:00, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Disagreement with the reasoning behind recent edits

While it is true that the main source for the Empto and Taxo prefixes says that they are WP:MADEUP, I don't think that the point of this article has been taken into account when removing them. Those prefixes may be made up, but they are in use. All of the unofficial (and, ultimately, official) prefixes had to be made up by someone - surely their usage is more important. Some examples: [1][2]. Do the empto and taxo prefixes deserve to be restored to the article? If not, where exactly is the line between prefixes that should be mentioned and prefixes that shouldn't be mentioned? Dark-Fire (talk) 23:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

No, they should never have been in there in the first place. We do not include things on the basis that a single academic once jokingly suggested them.

The only prefixes that belong here are;

1. Prefixes that, whilst unofficial, actually have currency, and real world examples of their use can be shown.
2. Prefixes that, whilst unadopted, can actually be shown to have been put forward in a reputable scientific journal.
3. Prefixes that have actually been discussed by a competent standards body, even if not adopted.

Anything else would be a nonsense. Mayalld (talk) 06:42, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

But that's my point. Those two fulfil the first point on your list. The whole point of what I said was that their origin was not the basis for their inclusion. Dark-Fire (talk) 10:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

No, neither reference shows currency. Currency requires that the term has an accepted meaning (or even a few widely accepted, but competing meanings). The second reference provides a couple of links to other sources that don't meet WP:RS (fr:Empto- is NOT a reliable source, merely a link to the French equivalent of this article!). The first reference showns that somebody once used the term, but there is zero evidence that the readers actually understand any specific exact meaning to the term. emptosecond in the context used is not a pseudo-SI prefix to the base unit, rather it is a Neologism, a Portmanteau word designed merely to convey the general impression of "a very short time indeed". Mayalld (talk) 10:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I would strongly disagree with your dismissal of those sources (some of your reasons are WP:OR-like, in my opinion). However, I have spotted a problem which may actually resolve this issue. Excluding the two sentences about the very ambiguous bronto- prefix, the article is now entirely 'Metric prefixes that were obsoleted or withdrawn from the SI standard'. It would therefore not be unreasonable to suggest that the article be renamed obsolete metric prefixes - the title of an article that was merged into this article. Dark-Fire (talk) 17:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Xona

Apparently there used to be reference somewhere to the prefix xona, but it is now gone. Any idea why? Was it invalid [and by whose standard, since this is a page about non-standard prefixes anyway], or did it get lost in the shuffle? Xona- still redirects to this page, and Wolfram Alpha uses and recognizes xona as being 10^27, so... some mention, somewhere? Either here about why it's gone or on the page about where it came from {I assume it is or was the X name in the backward march of letters?}. Lostdrewid (talk) 20:24, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Unofficial prefixes

Under the heading Unofficial prefixes there are currently seven subheadings (listed below).

1. Other proposed prefixes
2. Japanese large numbers
3. Chinese large numbers
4. Large numbers from Buddhism found in Chinese numerals
5. Japanese small numbers
6. Small numbers from Chinese numerals
7. Other possible prefixes without a set factor higher than exa

The Other proposed prefixes could use some references. As for the other six subheadings, have they ever been suggested as prefixes? The article doesn't even say so. It looks like a few lists of Chinese numbers, Japanese numbers and possible prefixes. Are we proposing them? We need refs here too but not just to show that the words are fair dinkum but that they actually constitute unofficial prefixes. JIMp _talk·cont 17:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Negatively defined article

So this is the article about unit prefixes which are not part of the SI. That's like writing an article about colours which are not green or animals which are not fish. Those deliberations at the top of the page as to what we should call it have an easy answer. Just move the article to Unit prefixes and include SI ones. They won't take up much space and there'll be lots of room once we ditch the original research, irrelevant info and editor's own suggestions. JIMp _talk·cont 18:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Moved from Non-SI unit prefixes to Unit prefix JIMp _talk·cont 08:07, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

femto and atto

It seems a bit funny to include myria and yotta but not femto and atto. I don't know exactly what status they have, so I won't write about them myself.--Nø (talk) 12:53, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

The article doesn't really aim to mention all unit prefixes, that would be too much. There is a link to Metric prefix, which goes into detail about the whole set of metric prefixes. So why should myria- and yotta- get special mention? The first is relevant as an example of a discontinued prefix (in the sense that it doesn't belong to the SI & is now rarely used) and the second is an example of prefix for a very large multiple, which is relevant to the discussion of the unofficial prefix bronto- (as the article explains, bronto- has been used for 10¹⁵ to 10²⁷ but 10¹⁵ to 10²⁴ is now covered by the SI prefixes peta-, zetta- and yotta-). JIMp _talk·cont 06:32, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

What is the scoop on "M" and "MM" meaning 1,000x and 1,000,000x?

I've found that in the oil industry, scientists and engineers typically use "M" to represent 1,000x and "MM" to represent 1,000,000x. For instance, "MBPD" means "thousand barrels per day" and "MMSCFD" means "million standard cubic feed per day". I know nothing about the history of this convention, nor the extent of its use. I came to this page hoping for some details, but I find no discussion of those prefixes here. If I can find some documentation elsewhere, I'll edit the page accordingly. In the meantime, do any of the experts watching this page have insight into those particular prefixes? -TC 98.108.203.102 (talk) 17:41, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Roman numerals! I've discovered that "M" and "MM" are 1,000 and 1,000,000 written in Roman numerals, and have become a shorthand to represent multipliers of those amounts in a variety of contexts, particularly in the business world (http://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-does-m-and-mm-stand-for, http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-use-of-k-for-thousands-and-mm-for-millions). In many old-school engineering contexts (not just the oil industry), that shorthand use extends to unit prefixes. This is definitely a thing, and I believe it deserves mention on this page, but I can't find any references of sufficient quality to justify an edit now. I'll keep looking. -TC 98.108.203.102 (talk) 22:33, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Well that's confusing as MM is actually 2000 in Roman numerals (while 1000000 may have been written as M with a vinculum). It may be true that the accounting-and-oil-industry "M" for 1000 derives from the Roman numeral for 1000 - or it may simply be an abbreviation of Mille. But repeating the M to multiply the prefixes is not the Roman way! See also Million, where the lede covers this briefly. The Roman numeral M may originate as an abbreviation of Mille (making it rather futile to wonder if the accounting "M" is a Roman numeral or an abbreviation), or it may be a modification of an earlier Roman numeral for 1000, see Roman numerals#Apostrophus.--Nø (talk) 12:14, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the information. Summary: MM is not 1,000,000 in Roman numerals as I thought, but the M / MM convention may nevertheless be rooted in Rome through Roman numerals and/or the Latin word "mille". Or it may not.

Personally, I've given up on researching this further. I can find many examples of M and MM being used this way in the engineering world, but nothing which actually explains the convention. So, I won't be editing the page to include M and MM; I'll leave that for someone more ambitious than I.

As an aside, the reason I'm interested in this is because I wrote a little widget for doing unit conversions to help me and my colleagues do technical work. It is smart enough to understand the SI unit prefixes, and I'm expanding it to understand the M and MM prefixes, but I need something to call them. For now, I'm calling them the "Roman" prefixes. That may be wrong, but I'll keep calling them that until something better comes along. -TC 98.108.203.102 (talk) 21:22, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Using "MM" for "million" makes sense if you consider it equivalent to "a thousand thousands". Actual Roman numeration for a million would be M̄: a bar, or vinculum, over a Roman numeral multiplies it by 1,000. --Thnidu (talk) 06:14, 20 August 2016 (UTC)