3 ms·
That sounds reasonable at first, but humans are messy and so the distinction is not always clear. For example, in music we use numbers for the notes of a scale
by moefh 2y ago
That sounds reasonable at first, but humans are messy and so the distinction is not always clear.
For example, in music we use numbers for the notes of a scale (G is the 5th of C, because in the C major scale: C=1, D=2, E=3, F=4, G=5, A=6, B=7). The numbers are clearly indices for the notes of the scale.
But we often think of stuff like: what's the 3rd of the 5th -- that is, get the note at the 5th position (G in our example) and then get the 3rd of that note (the 3rd of G is B). But note that B is the 7th of C major, not the 8th you'd get from adding 5 and 3.
The problem, of course, is that we ended up using the numbers as offsets, even though they started as indices.
- xandrius 2y agoYeah, because the scale is an index (e.gm A=6) but the operations are offsets in that case. Because if you moved from G/5 to B/7 that is clearly 2.
- moefh 2y agoYes, that's the point: the numbers are used as both indices and offsets. To any musician or music student, moving from G to B is "going up a (major) third", even though it's obviously going up by 2 notes. The name of that offset ("interval" in music speak) is "third", even though it has a distance of 2 notes. My point (more generally) is that even though it looks reasonable to make indices start from 1 and offsets from 0, in practice these things can get mixed together. It's not reasonable to get people to use two different numbers for what they see as the same thing (because their use got mixed).
- bmacho 2y agoMusic doesn't count, it has its own numbering.