"Decimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an easy example, can remember the value of the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of the circle beyond four places of decimals, or at most six—3.141592. Here is the value to 108 decimal places: ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... laughed. "You'll find it way back in the forest," he said, "and enough sweet potatoes to distil fifty gallons of spirit—all proof, sir, decimal 1986 specific gravity water extracted by Soemmering's method—in fact, as good as you could get it ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, reduction, simple and compound proportion, and vulgar and decimal fractions, must be ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... proportion to their height, criminals generally weigh less than normal individuals, whose weight in kilogrammes is given by the decimal figures of his height as expressed in ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... the articles cost per dozen by 10. which is done by removing the decimal point one place to ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... The word for "water" also meant "salt made from water," from which it might be inferred that the water with which they were familiar was saltwater. It is evident they manufactured salt by evaporating salt water. They possessed boats and ships. They had progressed so far as to perfect "a decimal system of enumeration, in itself," says Max Mueller, "one of the most marvellous achievements of the human mind, based on an abstract conception of quantity, regulated by a philosophical classification, and yet conceived, nurtured, and finished before the soil of Europe was trodden ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... hard, man-killing work about the place, and there is now very little of it. And usually it so works out that adopting the way which is easier on the men also decreases the cost. There is most intimate connection between decency and good business. We also investigate down to the last decimal whether it is cheaper to make or to ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... many nights before their marriage summing up the situation, and putting two and two together; but, as they were both liberal in their political views, and had no conservative opposition, the two and two always made four without a decimal remainder, and the house voted for marriage with an overwhelming majority. So they became legally united before they were morally mature for love, and before they had formal introduction to the great things of the world. After the solemnization of their marriage ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Harry demonstratively, 'that's an infinitesimal fraction of Pi; that's a minute decimal of this great, sneering, ugly aggregate "society" that we have to deal with whether we will or no, and that rends us and grinds us to powder if only it can once get in the thin end of a chance. Take shaky bitter old Miss Catherine ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... preserves the same attitude throughout means (if it be justified) that it is not a human being at all, but a mere embodiment of two or three characteristics which are fully displayed within the first ten minutes, and then keep on repeating themselves, like a recurrent decimal. Strong theatrical effects can be produced by this method, which is that of the comedy of types, or of "humors." But it is now generally, and rightly, held that a character should be primarily an individual, and only incidentally (if at all) capable of classification under this type or that. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Till the tithe of one, taken in kind be enough. But, as fractions imply that we'd have to dissect, And to cutting up Bishops I strongly object. We've a small, fractious prelate whom well we could spare, Who has just the same decimal worth, to a hair, And, not to leave Ireland too much in the lurch. We'll let her have ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to twelfths of the visible diameter of the disc of the Sun or Moon, which was much more convenient. However, the word is now almost obsolete in both senses, and partial eclipses, alike of the Sun and of the Moon, are defined in decimal parts of the diameter of the luminary—tenths or hundredths according to the amount of precision which is aimed at. Where an eclipse of the Moon is described as being of more than 12 Digits or more than 1.0 ( 1 diameter) it is to be understood that the eclipse ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... a faint dividing line between astronomy and mathematics, as between medicine and natural history. John of Seville was a notable mathematician, the compiler of a practical arithmetic, the first to make mention of decimal fractions, which possibly may have been his invention, and in the Zohar, the text-book of mediaeval Jewish mysticism, which appeared centuries before Copernicus's time, the cause of the succession of day and night is stated ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... to be turned the same way, and that all the personages represented are to possess ideal beauty of the highest order, which ideal beauty consists partly in a Greek outline of nose, partly in proportions expressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin; but partly also in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen is to bestow upon God's work in general. This I say is the kind of teaching which through various channels, Royal ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... range of fiction extends all the way from complete hallucination to the scientists' perfectly self-conscious use of a schematic model, or his decision that for his particular problem accuracy beyond a certain number of decimal places is not important. A work of fiction may have almost any degree of fidelity, and so long as the degree of fidelity can be taken into account, fiction is not misleading. In fact, human culture is very largely ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... and measures in common use, figures, decimal points, bars of division, and in ordinal numbers the affixes "st," "d," "nd," "rd," and "th" will be each counted as one word. Letters and groups of letters, when such groups do not form dictionary words and are not combinations ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... him," I can hear A.G.4 remarking to M.S.19 (decimal 9 recurring) as they met in the corridor on their way to lunch, "but I find him a patient, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... worked out in detail and gave to the world, and which the world has not improved upon, is our present decimal system. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... three figures to be multiplied by two figures. She looked upon it, and quivering her fingers in a manner which I thought very pretty, but of which I knew not whether it was art or play, multiplied the sum regularly in two lines, observing the decimal place; but did not add the two lines together, probably disdaining so easy an operation.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... He must have lived in odd times. In our days he would not have gone far without falling in with a teetotaller, or a decimal coinage man, or a school-for-all man, or a competitive examination man, who would not allow a drayman to lower a barrel into a cellar unless he could expound the mathematical principles by which he performed ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... dollars of a later coinage than 1877 were called in, and a term was fixed after which they would cease to be legal tender. In 1885 decimal bronze coins were introduced. In July, 1886, a decree was published calling in all foreign and Chinese chop dollars [124] within six months, after which date the introducer of such coin into the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... The proportion which the eclipsed part of the surface of the sun or moon bears to the diameter; it is sometimes expressed in digits, but more frequently as a decimal, the diameter being ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... animals, like the bison, barren-ground caribou, fur seal, and sea birds on their nesting cliffs, to assume such security from their numbers as to ignore man; and all such cases are highly interesting manifestations of the influence of the fourth law when carried out to six decimal places. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... if a man had invented arithmetic, algebra, or the decimal system, he would have obtained no patent; but Bareme would have had a right of property in his Computations. Pascal, for his theory of the weight of the atmosphere, would not have been patented; instead of him, a glazier would have obtained the privilege of the barometer. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... to mind that no adequate provision has yet been made for the uniformity of weights and measures also contemplated by the Constitution. The great utility of a standard fixed in its nature and founded on the easy rule of decimal proportions is sufficiently obvious. It led the Government at an early stage to preparatory steps for introducing it, and a completion of the work will be a just title to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... just mentioned. The clown that has a 9 on his body is portrayed just at the moment when two balls which he is juggling are in mid-air. The positions of these balls clearly convert his figure into the recurring decimal .[.9]. Now, since the recurring decimal .[.9] is equal to 9/9, and therefore to 1, it is evident that, although the clown who bears the figure 1 is absent, the man who bears the figure 9 by this simple artifice has for the occasion given his figure the value of the number ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... sea-calves, or sea-forms, offspring of the sea (Halosydna). This counting by fives, is significant, hinting the earliest abstraction from the sensuous through number, specially by means of the five-system, though Homer knew well the decimal system (see Od. XVI, 245. Iliad II. 126). Menelaus with his companions is to take on this sea-form, and be counted with the rest, though in disguise; then when Proteus lies down to sleep with his herds or Forms, he is to be seized; that is, seized ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... hint was on the moneys of this part of the world. There is something in the simplicity of a decimal coinage which is revolting to the human mind; thus the French, in small affairs, reckon strictly by halfpence; and you have to solve, by a spasm of mental arithmetic, such posers as thirty-two, forty-five, or even a hundred halfpence. In the Pacific States they have ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the words for hand. The sixth count begins with the little finger of the left hand, and the tenth reaches the thumb. The eleventh count begins with the little finger of the right hand again, and so the count continues. The Igorot system is evidently decimal. One man, however, invariably recorded his eleventh count on his toes, from which he returned to the little finger of his right hand for the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... into proper conjunction with the solar year, and there are grounds for believing that prior to the division of the year into twelve parts, there was a year of ten months corresponding to a simpler, perhaps a decimal, system, which appears to have ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... scientific department, the works on Sanskrit grammar and lexicography are models of logical and analytical research. There are also valuable works on jurisprudence, on rhetoric, poetry, music, and other arts. The Hindu system of decimal notation made its way through the Arabs to modern nations, our usual figures being, in their origin, letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. Their medical and surgical ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... by twos. Thus, one is avicho; two, raboi. Above two, so many twos, as four is raboi-raboi; and six, raboi-raboi-raboi. Ten is expressed by spreading both hands, and twenty by bringing fingers and toes together. Thus the Caribs. Decimal numeration is found among all the American aborigines, ancient and modern, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... or more individual measurements in the distribution, it may be found interesting to calculate the median point to the nearest hundredth of a scale unit. Very seldom will anything be gained by carrying the calculation beyond the second decimal place. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... Mohammedans, and, without algebra, astronomical knowledge of to-day would have been impossible. Christianity did not even invent figures. We got those from the Arabs. The very word "algebra" is Arabic. The decimal system, I believe, however, was due to a German, but whether he was a Christian or not, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... appealed to me. For those of my readers who may only be familiar with Earth time measurements, an enar is about eighteen Earth days, an enaren a little less than two Earth days, and an enaro nearly four and a half hours. The Universal system has the advantage, I admit, of a decimal division; but I have found it clumsy always. I may be stubborn and old-fashioned, but a clock face with only ten numerals and one hand still strikes me as being ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... disorder ordinary transactions. But any depreciation, however small—even the liability to depreciation without its reality—is enough to disorder exchange transactions. They are calculated to such an extremity of fineness that the change of a decimal may be fatal, and may turn a profit into a loss. Accordingly London has become the sole great settling-house of exchange transactions in Europe, instead of being formerly one of two. And this pre-eminence London will probably maintain, for it is a natural pre-eminence. ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot |
