5 ms·

Defining an 'order of magnitude' as 1024 seems a little odd to me. I would consider this to be closer to 3 orders of magnitued.

• eggy 6y ago
  1024 (2^10) is ~10^3 (I know switching bases!) vs say 10 (10^1), so two orders of magnitude larger in general. A gig 10^9 would be many orders of magnitude. An order of magnitude is generally a jump to the next power of 10. So 10 (10^1) is an order of magnitude larger than 1 (10^0) as 100 (10^2) is to 10 (10^1), and so on. People frequently misuse the term when speaking in technical terms. When the average person uses it to denote a big jump, I let it go - usually ;) If you stick with base 2 I guess you could say many orders of magnitude (2^32 = 4,294,967,296 vs 2^8 = 256, or 24 orders of magnitude?).
  • jovdg 6y ago
    But you could use Base-1024, in which case the term is used correctly. It's all relative ;)
    • eggy 6y ago
      Why? The common base is 10, and "orders of magnitude" is normally based on 10X between orders here. Ten fingers, decimal system, etc. Don't bring up metric vs. Imperial ;) I work at an engineering firm, and that's how most engineers understand it.