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Order of magnitude

Posted by R. Berg on March 04, 2002

In Reply to: Order of magnitude posted by honnibal on March 04, 2002

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

: Thanx in advance.

Just ignore those silly people below. They have pitiful attention spans. "Order of magnitude" doesn't refer to a measure, like yards or liters. Basically, it means a multiple of ten. If I think my checking account contains $975 and the bank thinks it contains $97.50, one of us is off by an order of magnitude, probably me. If I think $975 and the bank thinks $9.75, that difference is two orders of magnitude.

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