6 ms·
If you ask people which floor of building they're on, it's going to depend on which country they're in. In North America, at least, the first floor you walk int
by bregma 4y ago
If you ask people which floor of building they're on, it's going to depend on which country they're in. In North America, at least, the first floor you walk into (in a sane city: I understand there are some which do not qualify in this respect due to hills or historic disaster recovery) is the first floor. On other continents, you enter the ground floor and need to take stairs or an elevating device to get to the first floor.
"Natural" zero-based counting at its best.
- perlgeek 4y agoA big international corporation (Siemens) had, at one point, standardized their buildings world wide to have room numbers starting with 2 on the ground floor, 3 on the floor above etc., leaving space for two basements. All room numbers were 5 digits, and skipped numbers if there were multiple windows in one room, based on the theory that such a room might later be sub-divided, and wanting to avoid renumbering of rooms down the hallway. (I encountered this around 2003, so might have well changed since then; didn't find any references only with a quick search).
- mywittyname 4y agoI worked for them relatively recently and didn't encounter this; or at least never noticed. Then again, our office building was an open office plan where desks next to the windows and rooms (conference or office) were all in the center of each floor.
- ajuc 4y agoThe ground floor is 0. The floor above 0 is 1. The floor below 0 is -1. Anything else is crazy TBH, the whole point of integer numbers is to count things that start at a defined point and go opposite ways. Why shift it and then reinvent weird pseudo-negative numbers like S1? But then again people measure distance in feet and write dates as month day year :)
- jccalhoun 4y agoIt would be nice if this was the case. In grad school I taught in a building that was on a hill and had once been separate buildings so different entrances were on different floor and the transition between the former separate buildings was 4 stairs. So there was a floor with rooms numbered 1xx and 0xx. There was also a floor below the 0xx floor. They just numbered it 00xx. And you could enter the building on any of those floors depending on what door you picked. The class I taught was in 0005. Room 005 was someone's office. So on the first day of every semester we would have students waiting outside the door of 005 instead of 0005...
- adrianmonk 4y agoCounterpoint: because floors are sum types. Floors 1 through 10 are "regular" floors. L is the lobby. P1 through P3 are the parking (basement) levels. So you have three types: regular, lobby, and parking. And the elevator labels are of type regular | lobby | parking. (Now you can't disagree with me because sum types are popular on HN, and I have framed this in terms of sum types.)
- bluetwo 4y agoI always said it was an argument between the counting of things versus the relative offset of things. This is a great example.
- levodelellis 4y agoI call `array[0]` the first element. I don't know what you'll think of that. I wonder how many multiples of people who like arguing about starting from 1 vs 0 and how many people were confused for more than a day
- systemvoltage 4y agoI've been living in North America for decades. Every building has G (zero). This is the floor that you walk into and has a lobby. The next floor up is 1 as such is labeled in the elevator. So your initial assumption is incorrect from my experience.
- jwarden 4y agoWhat city are you in, out of curiosity?
- systemvoltage 4y agoSF Bay Area (currently), but have lived in several major metro areas.
- silisili 4y agoThis is not my experience in the US. Most places either have G or 1 for the first floor. Then 2 for the next. So some elevators say G, then 2, 3, and so on. I've seen setups like you mention, but they definitely aren't the majority in places I've lived.
- systemvoltage 4y agoI'll have to look actively next time I ride an elevator, this is just from my recollection.
- Miiko 4y agoA lot of elevators in US do indeed have G for the ground floor, but that's because they are made by ThyssenKrupp AG, a German company ;).
- KineticLensman 4y agoWhen I was at Leeds University the ground floor of the Physics Admin building was Level 6 (it went up to Level 11). It was built on a hill and according to legend this allowed room for expansion (which never happened) down the hill without requiring negative floor numbers. To add to the fun the only continuous corridor through the entire T-shaped building was on Level 10, one end of which (the base of the T) was at ground level on its part of the hill. There was a famous 'kink' in the middle of the top / cross-bar of the T (apparently the longest corridor in Europe) because they started building from each end and were slightly off.
- GnarfGnarf 4y agoThe Patterson Building at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS, has a basement and four floors. The rooms on the first floor are numbered 1XX, second floor 2XX, etc. up to the top floor 4XX. The elevator, however, goes from floor '1' (the basement), to floor '5' (the top or fourth floor). This really confuses visitors. The Elevator Mafia want $10,000 to fix it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]