Re: exponential/scientific notation in non-Western character

From: Mount, Rob (Robert F) (rob.mount@intergraph.com)
Date: Fri Feb 17 2006 - 11:07:14 CST

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Mike Ayers wrote:
> "2^3" isn't even a "western thing" (perhaps "western thang"), so much
> as a workaround for having only ASCII to rely on. I believe this
> usage first appeared in programming languages, and folk just borrowed the
> notation rather than compose the needed ASCII art: [...]

My understanding is that "^" is a workaround for the lack of a more suitable
ASCII character to represent Donald Knuth's up-arrow notation. For more
information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up-arrow_notation .
And for other alternate notations (including Steinhaus-Moser polygon
notation which was discussed on this list several weeks ago) see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_numbers#Notations .

Regards,
Rob

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