"Order of Magnitude"
In advanced mathematics, as well as colloquially in popular culture, especially geek culture, the phrase "order of magnitude" is used to denote a change in a numeric quantity, usually a measurement, by a factor of 10; that is, the moving of the decimal point in a number one way or the other, possibly with the addition of significant zeros.
Occasionally the phrase "half an order of magnitude" is also used, generally in more informal contexts. Sometimes, this is used to denote a 5 to 1 change, or alternatively 101/2 to 1 (approximately 3.162 to 1).
Read more about this topic: Magnitude (mathematics)
Famous quotes containing the words order of, order and/or magnitude:
“Undoubtedly we have not questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
“Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)