# Where are my commas?! (Math) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 20, 2011, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219 "2011-10-20T04:24:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2

**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2011, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/21 "2011-10-20T15:07:16Z")

> [@yabob](#): > > No, RATIONAL would be year / month / day, which sorts correctly without any special handling, provided that you use leading zeros on days and months \< 10. This also happen to be the ISO standard. ---

**Author:** ![Lancia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lancia/32/17174_2.png) [@Lancia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lancia)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2011, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/22 "2011-10-20T19:16:34Z")

> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > Nonsense, year-month-day is the ideal system. 😃 Day-month-year and month-day-year are both in common usage and can provide some ambiguity (is 10/12/2011 October 12th or December 10th?), but since no one uses year-day-month, there’s no chance of ambiguity with year-month-day. It has other benefits too, like making sorting chronologically easier and maintaining a most significant digit to least significant digit standard. > > Also, on the comments of the x10^ vs. E, I tended to just use a little e instead, so I’d write 1.56e5. The lower case also provides a visual separation which I think makes it slightly easier to read. > > For the OP, where are you? As others mentioned, with the various usage for thousand and decimal separators, I could see them not using anything for thousands to remove any chance of ambiguity between the two. I think the computer explanation also makes sense. Sorry, real life intervened. First of all, I question the use of computers as a reason for dropping commas when writing large numbers. Not that I’m saying anybody is wrong, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Anytime I’ve seen large numbers when using a computer (online banking or eBay, for instance) they place a comma between the hundreds and thousandth place. Seems it wouldn’t be hard to write a program that reads a number and inserts a comma as needed. However, I know next to nothing about computers. My WAG, which seems to be reflected in this thread, is that there is no universally agreeable way to write a large number.12,345,678 is acceptable in the US. Britain and Australia seem to favor 12 345 678. Other countries choose 12’345’678. So I guess the authors of my textbook said 'screw it, we’ll just do it like this:" and shitcanned all of them. ---

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2011, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/23 "2011-10-20T19:32:00Z")

Any sort of date ordering will require special handling when sorting, to know that jan \< feb \< mar and so on. Default sorting will only work if you represent months with numbers, but that runs the risk of confusion in determining which two-digit number is the month and which is the date of the month. I write my dates as 20oct2011, and there’s no way anyone can misinterpret that, even if they’ve never seen the format before. And another risk of using the e notation for scientific notation is that students will often get confused and enter, say “ten to the seventh” into their calculators as “10e7”. I’ve seen that mistake more often than I’d care to count. ---

**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2011, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/24 "2011-10-20T19:48:28Z")

> [@Chronos](#): > > Any sort of date ordering will require special handling when sorting, to know that jan \< feb \< mar and so on. Default sorting will only work if you represent months with numbers, but that runs the risk of confusion in determining which two-digit number is the month and which is the date of the month. In actual practice, there is little risk of confusion with YYYY-MM-DD because there is no culture on earth which writes dates as YYYY-DD-MM. ---

**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/25 "2011-10-21T08:17:06Z")

> [@Floater](#): > > This also happen to be the ISO standard. But in everday life, day is more important than year because it changes quicker: you make appointments for next week or tomorrow, not next year, and you think about what you will do on Friday, not in two years. ---

**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/26 "2011-10-21T08:30:45Z")

> [@Lancia](#): > > First of all, I question the use of computers as a reason for dropping commas when writing large numbers. Not that I’m saying anybody is wrong, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Anytime I’ve seen large numbers when using a computer (online banking or eBay, for instance) they place a comma between the hundreds and thousandth place. Seems it wouldn’t be hard to write a program that reads a number and inserts a comma as needed. However, I know next to nothing about computers. The usual way is that the computer stores the number (as designated numerical value) all mushed up and then is told separately how to output it. You can see this in Excel: if you define a field as “contains only number”, you can then choose how to display 123456. (And currency has other options) > [@](#): > > My WAG, which seems to be reflected in this thread, is that there is no universally agreeable way to write a large number.12,345,678 is acceptable in the US. Britain and Australia seem to favor 12 345 678. Other countries choose 12’345’678. Um, no. There are currently established traditions, like using commas for thousands; and new disambigiuous ways that should be used. The only way to separate thousands that can’t be mistaken would be spaces. ---

**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/27 "2011-10-21T09:56:26Z")

> [@constanze](#): > > This I would not recommend, because little e is the abbreviation for[Eulers number](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_number) in math.. Yes, but math usually doesn’t use something like 5x2. The variable is followed by either another variable, a parenthesis, a superscript or subscript, or a space. (It’s also supposed to be italicized, but people forget about that a lot. Of course, this only works if you use 2e2- for 0.02, rather than 2e-2. And using spaces is still ambiguous: it looks like more than one number. A thin space is better, but most keyboards don’t include that character, so it’s more difficult to type. I assume that most people who do use it frequently have software that does it for them. And, if that’s the case, that might be why the OP’s textbook is messed up: they forgot to run the macro that fixed that. Or maybe printer didn’t understand thin spaces and just removed them. I, personally, will stick to using commas when writing in American English, in the same way I use other American punctuation conventions. It’s rare that there’s any actual ambiguity, as, if it’s possible to have a fractional amount, I probably will include the decimal point. Money’s an exception, but that’s covered by the use of the dollar sign. Only when showing math will I use spaces. ---

**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/28 "2011-10-21T10:01:46Z")

**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/29 "2011-10-21T10:20:37Z")

> [@Norse](#): > > I’d be careful about the size of the brush you’re using here if I were you. 😉 > > I’m definitely European, went to school long before computers were commonly used (I started using computers for anything else than programming about halfway through my Uni years and wrote my MSc thesis on a 386 running WordPerfect under DOS), and I’ve never even heard about the high comma as a decimal point. The low comma, however, was our standard decimal comma when I started learning about fractions and decimals in primary school. > > ETA, location: Scandinavia. And up here we still standardize on the low comma as a decimal point even if I personally prefer the point. Yes, I was a stamp collector in the 1960’s, long before computers were widespread like now, and I saw the European-style notation (actually, mostly everywhere-but-United-States notation) on postage stamps from around the world. ---

**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/30 "2011-10-21T10:37:15Z")

> [@constanze](#): > > Probably for the same reasons, many Europeans are getting used to writing numbers for computers with dots as decimal separator instead of the comma, because computers and calculators are manufactured to the US standard and thus use the dot for 2.5 (two and a half). There’s the magic ideas like system locales and international keyboards. Swedish computers are set (if installed as Swedish - can be changed). For example, on a Windows 7 machine, Control Panel-\>Region and Language-\>Customize Format gives you a “Decimal Symbol” option. The numeric keypad on every keyboard I possess has a comma instead of a decimal point. On an iPhone, change the regional settings to “Svenska” and the calculator app uses a comma for a decimal point, as this screenshot from my phone shows: [![](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2346328/Photo%2021-10-2011%2012%2033%2021.png) ](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2346328/Photo%2021-10-2011%2012%2033%2021.png) Over here in Europe we really aren’t getting stuck with US-configured computers. ---

**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/31 "2011-10-21T10:52:54Z")

> [@constanze](#): > > But in everday life, day is more important than year because it changes quicker: you make appointments for next week or tomorrow, not next year, and you think about what you will do on Friday, not in two years. Yet, amazingly, cultures that do write YYYYMMDD survive and still manage to make all their appointments! Crazy! As a programmer, YYYYMMDD is the only date format I will accept. It is machine sortable and arithmetic can be used to compare dates. For example 20091020 \< 20111019, therefore 20111019 comes after 20091020. However, the only way to deal with 20102009 and 19102011 is to write code to manually remove the day, month and year and compare those or, as every programmer does, reformat it to YYYYMMDD. ---

**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/32 "2011-10-21T12:51:05Z")

> [@amanset](#): > > There’s the magic ideas like system locales and international keyboards. > > … > > Over here in Europe we really aren’t getting stuck with US-configured computers. Not any longer. The first thing, before PCs, were calculators, which came with a dot. So if you had higher math in school and were (finally) in grade 9 allowed to use a calculator, you had to learn about using the dot for decimals. The primitive computers had no local settings, either. Of course I have a “normal” keyboard, that is, with umlauts and the z on top instead of lower left. Of course my locale is set to my country. But this is a thin overlay and when dealing with software from other vendors, I can’t blindly rely on them to have considered all regions and realize that I use a comma instead of dots. So to be safe, I use the dot for decimals all times. If the software recognizes it, fine, if not, no problem. And when posting on this board or elsewhere, I also need to remember that our Merican friends won’t understand us if we use commas for decimals (it’s diffiult to remember to write the 7s different when handwriting an adress for a parcel). ---

**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/33 "2011-10-21T12:57:39Z")

> [@amanset](#): > > Yet, amazingly, cultures that do write YYYYMMDD survive and still manage to make all their appointments! Crazy! Who said anything about surviving? And can you please give me an example of a normal _culture_ that uses Year first format in _everyday life_? Because that’s what I was talking about. Most Europeans for example use 24 hr. format, because it’s less ambigiuous than 12 hr. But in everyday speech, most people will say “let’s meet at 5 or half past 4” instead of “let’s meet at 17 or 16:30” because it’s easier. It’s only when you write the time down in your calender (which shows the hours) or enter it into a machine that people will translate “5 o’clock” into “17:00”. > [@](#): > > As a programmer, YYYYMMDD is the only date format I will accept. It is machine sortable and arithmetic can be used to compare dates. For example 20091020 \< 20111019, therefore 20111019 comes after 20091020. However, the only way to deal with 20102009 and 19102011 is to write code to manually remove the day, month and year and compare those or, as every programmer does, reformat it to YYYYMMDD. What the software does with dates, and how it stores them for internal sorting, is one thing. How you let people enter the date and output the sorted results, is another thing. Do you really believe that in everyday life, people prefer to tell you the year first, then month, then day? It’s just as much work to make the input field DDMMYYYY and convert it, as offering them an input field of YYYYMMDD, isn’t it? (And letting the people type in numbers would also be quicker than three seperate dropdown fields!) The real trouble comes from putting up an input field without telling the format. That’s really bad scripting. People have to guess whether it’s YY or YYYY. ---

**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/34 "2011-10-21T13:28:00Z")

> [@constanze](#): > > Not any longer. The first thing, before PCs, were calculators, which came with a dot. So if you had higher math in school and were (finally) in grade 9 allowed to use a calculator, you had to learn about using the dot for decimals. > > The primitive computers had no local settings, either. > > Of course I have a “normal” keyboard, that is, with umlauts and the z on top instead of lower left. Of course my locale is set to my country. > > But this is a thin overlay and when dealing with software from other vendors, I can’t blindly rely on them to have considered all regions and realize that I use a comma instead of dots. So to be safe, I use the dot for decimals all times. If the software recognizes it, fine, if not, no problem. > > And when posting on this board or elsewhere, I also need to remember that our Merican friends won’t understand us if we use commas for decimals (it’s diffiult to remember to write the 7s different when handwriting an adress for a parcel). It doesn’t matter what happened in the past, what matter is what is happening now. And what is happening now is that people are not being forced into US practices due to hardware and software being manufactured to US standards, which is what you claimed. Maybe you’re using some magic software that doesn’t use system locales. Thankfully I’ve never come across them and, frankly, I don’t think many other people are either. [http://boersen.manager-magazin.de/spo\_mmo/](http://boersen.manager-magazin.de/spo_mmo/) > **[DN Börs - Aktuella börskurser, valutor och räntor (i samarbete med Dagens...](https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/bors/)** > > DN Börs visar aktuella index från världens börser, valutor och boräntor i samarbete med Dagens Industri. [http://bourse.lemonde.fr/](http://bourse.lemonde.fr/) > **[La Bolsa | Mercados en Cinco Días](https://cincodias.elpais.com/mercados/bolsa/)** > > Sigue en directo la cotización de la bolsa española, europeas y americanas: el Ibex 35, Mercado Continuo, Eurostoxx 50, Dow Jones, CAC 40, Nasdaq 100 o Nikkei 225 en tiempo real con Cinco Días. [http://bloomberg.finanza.repubblica.it/Indici/Tutti](http://bloomberg.finanza.repubblica.it/Indici/Tutti) Just a few examples. The economy pages were the most obvious ones to find numbers. Clearly there’s a move to the US convention. And yes, you post using US standards on this board out of courtesy because it is a US board. Similarly, despite being British and growing up with a decimal point, when writing in Swedish I use a comma. Because that’s how it is done here. ---

**Author:** ![FasterThanMeerkats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@FasterThanMeerkats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FasterThanMeerkats)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/35 "2011-10-21T13:41:58Z")

I’ve noticed this in video games too, usually wherever player stats are posted. It’s extremely annoying because the width differences of the numbers means you can’t compare numbers in roughly the same column and assume they represent the same order of magnitude. (e.g. 1’s might take up less space than 0’s depending on the font) Any space/dot/comma would be welcome, but for now good information has been turned to meaningless gibberish. :rolleyes: ---

**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/36 "2011-10-21T13:49:18Z")

> [@constanze](#): > > Who said anything about surviving? And can you please give me an example of a normal _culture_ that uses Year first format in _everyday life_? Because that’s what I was talking about. Swedish. I live in Sweden. I see it daily. I do it myself. > [@constanze](#): > > Most Europeans for example use 24 hr. format, because it’s less ambigiuous than 12 hr. But in everyday speech, most people will say “let’s meet at 5 or half past 4” instead of “let’s meet at 17 or 16:30” because it’s easier. It’s only when you write the time down in your calender (which shows the hours) or enter it into a machine that people will translate “5 o’clock” into “17:00”. Maybe you need to travel more. I know it is very common to use the 24 hour clock in conversation here. > [@constanze](#): > > What the software does with dates, and how it stores them for internal sorting, is one thing. How you let people enter the date and output the sorted results, is another thing. And generally it bends to locales. iBank, the financial software I use at homne, uses YYYYMMDD, both for general use and can be configured for both importing and exporting. Outlook, which I use at work, uses YYYYMMDD when dealing with the calendar. > [@constanze](#): > > Do you really believe that in everyday life, people prefer to tell you the year first, then month, then day? It’s just as much work to make the input field DDMMYYYY and convert it, as offering them an input field of YYYYMMDD, isn’t it? (And letting the people type in numbers would also be quicker than three seperate dropdown fields!) People generally write YYYYMMDD here, yes. And seriously, software is configured to adapt to different locales. I see it all the time. If you are not then I suggest you’ve screwed up your installations. Here’s a screenshot from Outlook: [![](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2346328/date.png) ](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2346328/date.png) And Excel: [![](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2346328/date2.png) ](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2346328/date2.png) I could go on but I get the feeling that no matter how much evidence I send your way you’ll still claim otherwise. > [@constanze](#): > > The real trouble comes from putting up an input field without telling the format. That’s really bad scripting. People have to guess whether it’s YY or YYYY. Well obviously if there’s space for four numbers it’ll be YYYY 😉 ---

**Author:** ![andrewesque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@andrewesque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andrewesque)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/37 "2011-10-21T15:37:28Z")

> [@constanze](#): > > And can you please give me an example of a normal _culture_ that uses Year first format in _everyday life_? Because that’s what I was talking about. All of East Asia, which is over 20% of the population of the entire world, uses YYYY-MM-DD in standard, normal life. (So today’s date would be written as 2011年10月21日 in China/Taiwan/Japan, or often just abbreviated as 2011.10.21). And even if you truncate to just month and day, which is of course fairly common as you don’t need to refer to the year all the time, it’s truncated to MM-DD, never DD-MM. ---

**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/38 "2011-10-21T16:12:37Z")

**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/39 "2011-10-21T20:22:38Z")

> [@pulykamell](#): > > In Hungary, the standard format is Year, Month, Date. But Hungary can be a bit weird about a lot of things. Not in this case—about 1.6 billion people live in countries/cultures where YYYY-MM-DD is the standard format. ---

**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219/40 "2011-10-21T20:29:56Z")

> [@constanze](#): > > But in everday life, day is more important than year because it changes quicker What a spurious argument. If what changes quicker is more important and determines what is written first, then time would be written as SS:MM:HH. > [@Floater](#): > > True and the informal way to write dates in Sweden is (d)d/(m)m -yy. In Sweden, just as in Germany, the official standard has been YYYY-MM-DD for several years now. People who grew up with the old system will no doubt continue to use it out of habit, not because it’s better or more logical. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-my-commas-math/600219.md?page=3)