3 ms·

Yes. A German friend of mine moved into her student dormitory in the US, and when she was told that her room was on the first floor, asked whether there was a l

by FabHK 4y ago

Yes. A German friend of mine moved into her student dormitory in the US, and when she was told that her room was on the first floor, asked whether there was a lift, because she had a heavy suitcase... Having said that, given that there are basements (in Europe, at least), it makes sense to call the ground floor 0. We are dealing with integers here, not natural numbers.

CRConrad 4y ago
But floors of multi-storey buildings are a pretty unique exception in the real world in having a characteristic where zero -- the number of stairs you need to climb from the ground floor -- has an actual tangible meaning (on the ground floor). How many other such examples can you (editorial you; anyone) come up with? Not many, I'd bet.
- FabHK 4y ago
  I thought you'd be wrong, and immediately came up with: - Hours after midnight. The (non-anglosaxon) watch goes from 0:00 to 24:00 (the latter is useful for deadlines: The proposal must be submitted by Friday, 24:00 (which coincides with Saturday, 0:00)). Then I cheated and looked up Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering#Other_fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering#Other_fie... ) - and whoops, that's basically it!
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    Yeah, duh, totally forgot that one. And I should know; the alarm clock on my windowsill says 0:54 right now.
    - CRConrad 4y ago
      Year -- or rather, decade, century, and millennium -- numbering. We're only in the second year of the second decade of the twenty-first century, so the decade will end and the next start at the end, not the beginning, of 2030. But this is perhaps more of a problem with numbers and zeroes, and ends and beginnings; people don't get that 10 is the last of the 00s, not the first of the 10s. The very first year was numbered 1, not 0, so that's not the problem. Or, it kind of is: People would be right, if the first year had been 0.

by FabHK 4y ago

CRConrad 4y ago

But floors of multi-storey buildings are a pretty unique exception in the real world in having a characteristic where zero -- the number of stairs you need to climb from the ground floor -- has an actual tangible meaning (on the ground floor). How many other such examples can you (editorial you; anyone) come up with? Not many, I'd bet.

FabHK 4y ago
I thought you'd be wrong, and immediately came up with: - Hours after midnight. The (non-anglosaxon) watch goes from 0:00 to 24:00 (the latter is useful for deadlines: The proposal must be submitted by Friday, 24:00 (which coincides with Saturday, 0:00)). Then I cheated and looked up Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering#Other_fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering#Other_fie... ) - and whoops, that's basically it!
- CRConrad 4y ago
  Yeah, duh, totally forgot that one. And I should know; the alarm clock on my windowsill says 0:54 right now.
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    Year -- or rather, decade, century, and millennium -- numbering. We're only in the second year of the second decade of the twenty-first century, so the decade will end and the next start at the end, not the beginning, of 2030. But this is perhaps more of a problem with numbers and zeroes, and ends and beginnings; people don't get that 10 is the last of the 00s, not the first of the 10s. The very first year was numbered 1, not 0, so that's not the problem. Or, it kind of is: People would be right, if the first year had been 0.