Why aren't there 0 days?
- Thread starter Brent
- Start date
Why would something like this be a question? You're counting things. January 1 is the first day of the month. Ergo, it's "the first." Making it "zero" would be stupid, its not the zeroth day. It's the first day of the month.
Any mathematicians who think the way posted above are all just being needlessly pedantic. Yeah "0" is a number, but when you're counting things it's not used. "0" is nothing, the absence of something. So if you're counting things, things that are there, then you don't use zero.
Any mathematicians who think the way posted above are all just being needlessly pedantic. Yeah "0" is a number, but when you're counting things it's not used. "0" is nothing, the absence of something. So if you're counting things, things that are there, then you don't use zero.
The joke is that mathematicians count from 1, actually. I don't know why people keep getting that backwards. It's the sensible computer scientist types who count everything from 0.
How do you figure that? If you slice a pie into 10 equal pieces, then 5 pieces is just as close to no pie as it is to a full pie. And half a pi is better than none.
Floor zero? Is that where all the mannequins are stored and one of them comes to life and goes out into the world each month?
(Anne Francis . . . what a babe!)
I was about to say. I'm somebody else has read Robots Of Dawn.
Our computer system at work gives babies an age of zero until they reach their first Birthday. We don't count fractional ages. So it is like distance. Until you've completed one mile, you've completed zero miles. Close only counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades.
No, 5.1 pieces of pie would be closer to a whole pie. It's like the difference between standing at the line and standing over the line.
Let me see if I can demonstrate how I visualize it by a count of 10 pieces:
1 10
2 9
3 8
4 7
5 6 if you round up on 5 in the first column
6 5 isn't that the same as rounding down at 6 on the second column?
7 4
8 3
9 2
10 1
Bleaghh, it's late at night, I'm not even sure I see my own logic.
I can relate to this. In the field I work in we always start with 0 as in input 0 is the first input of a 16 bit integer file and 15 is the last. I think the reason they don't do that is that it would confuse the simple people. The concept of zero is what separates us from the apes but the average person still does not understand it or the concept of numbering systems that are not base 10. The simple fact is that we have a base ten system because we have 10 fingers. If we only had 8 fingers we would be on an octal base system right now and the numbers 8 and 9 would never have been invented. I am not a computer guy but a PLC guy in industrial controls for years. Its different from the computer world but the two are getting closer all the time. Perhaps the one talking about rounding was really talking about truncation where everything beyond a certain level is ignored. In that case 5.5 or even 5.9 would be a 5 until it reached the level of 6.
And all this time I thought it was the fact that humans have sex over the telephone!
Sometimes, but not always
I'm getting better at VB.Net from my Cobol/Adabas Natural ways, and there are instances where VB.Net starts the count at one.
"No, what separates us from the apes is we don't use our tongues to clean our own genitals." - Arnold J. Rimmer
"No, what separates us from the apes is we don't use our tongues to clean our own genitals." - Arnold J. Rimmer
And what a loss that is.
Can apes do that?“No, what separates us from the apes is we don't use our tongues to clean our own genitals.” - Arnold J. Rimmer
I don't think I can really put it better, to say Jan 1st is "day 0" or the second is day one seems silly. When you have a dollar, you have a dollar, not zero dollars, you have five, not four, your counting something. Maybe when it comes to computer coding you start at Zero for certain things, but even on computers I see lists saying "This list contains seven items: 1...." not "0...." Anyway, as has been said, when counting something like days...your well...counting. To start with Zero seems to be somewhat stupid to be blunt, and I've been taught that Zero is well...Zero, nothing.
But in the military can you pronounce it with your choice of "nought" and "zero"?
What time is it?
Well, according to my watch it's nought zero zero zero hours.
Yes, but what time is it?
Well now it's nought zero zero one hours.
I will shoot you where you stand!
The US Navy omits "hours", and all American services pronounce the last two zeros as "hundred". Thus, 0000 is "Oh-hundred"; in the Army, it would be "Oh-hundred hours".
I can't attest to the term for midnight suggested above; it wasn't used aboard the CV whose quartermaster section I was briefly attached to.
The year 0 BCE actually does exist under the modern Astronomical Calendar. (Technically speaking, I think it could as fairly be termed 0 CE as 0 BCE, given that it's preceded by 1 BCE and succeeded by 1 CE.)
It's a question of whether you're measuring time elapsed (e.g. 0 days, 12 hours) or counting intervals of time (e.g. day one, month three). Your stopwatch will always display 0 minutes if you use it to time something that takes something less than a minute; a 24-hour clock will display 0 hours between midnight and one; time is often measured in terms of how much of it has elapsed.
With the exception of years on the Astronomical Calendar, though, calendars use only interval counts.
In terms of elapsed time, I can get that, but in terms of we should have dates that say "0" because people thing it doesn't make sense to start with one? Jan 1st, June 1st all that, is the first day of such a month, thus counting the start of something, but whatever. This seems like a rather odd topic, and I have to wonder if the OP is serious, or just... laughing his ass off at the responses.
But in the military can you pronounce it with your choice of "nought" and "zero"?
What time is it?
Well, according to my watch it's nought zero zero zero hours.
Yes, but what time is it?
Well now it's nought zero zero one hours.
I will shoot you where you stand!
The US Navy omits "hours", and all American services pronounce the last two zeros as "hundred". Thus, 0000 is "Oh-hundred"; in the Army, it would be "Oh-hundred hours".
I can't attest to the term for midnight suggested above; it wasn't used aboard the CV whose quartermaster section I was briefly attached to.
I spent seven years in the US Navy and never heard of "Oh-hundred hours". My position included entering important events in the Log, and "0000" was never an entry, even in Basic Training. The Navy always had log entries end at 23:59 and for the next day start at 00:01.
It's all in how you look at it. In the 24-hour period after the beginning of a new month, do you count that as the "1st day", or do you view it as "less than 1 day since the month started"?
The former is certainly much more common, but the latter is how you might come to think of it as day 0 if you were so inclined.
