Profs

Anybody can tell me what is the quantitative measure of an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE? Or is there one?

Thanx in advance.

I am under the probably mistaken impression that this term comes to us from astrophysics. Stars are classified by magnitude, I believe. Then again, I am attracting a growing reputation for defiantly choosing to labour under my false apprehensions, even once it's been conclusively proven to me that I am wrong.

Ten is the usual scale factor used for this, although I don't know if there's any justification for that. When I studied maths in the 60s the professor who taught astrophysics seemed to keep numbers on a very loose rein. His order of magnitude was anything from 10 to any big number you like.

By the way, this was in England and he was what we know as a professor, i.e. up at the top of his particular learning tree (and in his case occasionally out of it), not a common or garden lecturer. Do US universities call what we call lecturers professors? I get that impression from the media. If so what are what we call professors called in the US?

It has been a long time, but in my recollection, here in the US, students at least, don't make a distinction between lecturers and professors. Academics probably make those distictions and more. We also refer to a single class in a subject as a course, while in the UK I believe a course is a series of classes.