"Decimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Parsi ladies rather better looking than I had already seen. One was really beautiful, allowing a decimal point off her nose. This beauty moved briskly and firmly and had eyes to see and be seen. Many of them have slightly hen-like expressions and wear glasses and carry their shoulders too high. As they are the only native women who appear in public ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... cents according to the place where it is exchanged. Bank of England notes or pounds are never worth less than four shillings and twopence, i.e., 480 cents or halfpennies, which, of course, is four dollars and 80 cents, there being 100 cents in a dollar. The decimal currency is extremely simple when once understood. Never less than 4.80 is given for an English pound, but sometimes 4.82 and 4.85 ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... ECLIPSE. The proportion which the eclipsed part of the surface of the sun or moon bears to the diameter; it is sometimes expressed in digits, but more frequently as a decimal, the diameter being taken ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to give an easy example, can remember the value of the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of the circle beyond four places of decimals, or at most six—3.141592. Here is the value to 108 decimal places: ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... before I quit this subject, that the Martial system of arithmetic differs from ours principally in the use of a duodecimal instead of a decimal basis. Figures are written on a surface divided into minute squares, and the value of a figure, whether it signify so many units, dozens, twelve dozens, and so forth, depends upon the square in which it is placed. The central ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... slightest clue. She knew, indeed, little herself, whatever she may have guessed. As for Hungerford, he was dumb. He refused to consider the matter. But he roundly maintained once or twice, without any apparent relevance, that a woman was like a repeating decimal—you could follow her, but you never could reach her. He usually added to this: "Minus one, Marmion," meaning thus to exclude the girl who preferred him to any one else. When I ventured to suggest that Miss Treherne might also be excepted, he said, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... books, wept when before my eyes men exploited science for their own personal ends. But my enthusiasm did not last long. The trouble is that every science has a beginning but not an end, like a recurring decimal. Zoology has discovered 35,000 kinds of insects, chemistry reckons 60 elements. If in time tens of noughts can be written after these figures. Zoology and chemistry will be just as far from their end as now, and all contemporary scientific work consists in increasing ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... this and subsequent "accounts" are presented by Cooper in tabular form, generally without decimal points in the figures; we have inserted decimals and omitted zeros to make ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... trouble you? [Hands him a thermometer] At the beginning of the experiment it was 37 decimal 2, degrees.[10] [To Doctor] That's right, I think? Would you mind feeling his pulse? ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... the Cape Province during that period was 8.33 per cent. In Natal, which had a huge — in fact, an overwhelming — native population, curiously enough, the increase was the same, even to the actual decimal figure, viz., 8.33 per cent.: but some allowance must be made, because a large number of Natives were out at work in the mines. Now, in the Transvaal — and in taking the Transvaal figures these did not apply as regarded squatting, because the increase was mainly due to ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... no bundle of toilet shams, Her beauty no boon of arsenical balms, And she weighs just sixty-two kilograms To a deci-decimal fraction. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... of higher rhythmic forms evidence will be afforded by a comparison of the total durations of the first and second five-groups included in the decimal series. Difference of some kind is of course to be looked for; equivalence between the groups would only be accidental, and inequality, apart from amount and constancy, is insignificant. In the results here presented the differentiation is, in the first place, of considerable value, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... that no adequate provision has yet been made for the uniformity of weights and measures also contemplated by the Constitution. The great utility of a standard fixed in its nature and founded on the easy rule of decimal proportions is sufficiently obvious. It led the Government at an early stage to preparatory steps for introducing it, and a completion of the work will be a just ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... "You'll find it way back in the forest," he said, "and enough sweet potatoes to distil fifty gallons of spirit—all proof, sir, decimal 1986 specific gravity water extracted by Soemmering's method—in fact, as good as you could get ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... time-worn church at Honedale, her thoughts, it must be confessed, were wandering more to the to-morrow and Aikenside, than to the sacred words her lips were uttering. She knew it was wrong, and with a nervous start would try to bring her mind back from decimal fractions to what the minister was saying; but Maddy was mortal, and right in the midst of the Collect, Aikenside and its owner would rise before her, together with the wonder how she and her grandfather would feel one week from that Sabbath day. ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... used by Professor Thorndike was the coefficient of correlation, which shows the amount of resemblance or association between any two things that are capable of measurement, and is expressed in the form of a decimal fraction somewhere between 0 and the unit 1. Zero shows that there is no constant resemblance at all between the two things concerned,—that they are wholly independent of each other, while 1 shows that they are completely dependent on each other, a condition that rarely exists, of course.[4] ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... various operations in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, reduction, simple and compound proportion, and vulgar and decimal fractions, must be ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... must a body revolve, in a circle of one foot radius, in order that in 0.01 of one second of time its deflection from a tangential direction shall be 0.0016083 of a foot? This decimal is the versed sine of the arc of 3 deg.15', or of 3.25 deg.. This angle is so small that the departure from the law that the deflection is equal to the versed sine of the angle is too slight to appear in our computation. Therefore, the arc of 3.25 deg. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... may be arranged on a decimal system, with intermediate weights for closer working, or they may be made so as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... the numbers from 20 to 30, lekor, a score, is sometimes used instead of dua-puloh (especially in mentioning dates), but in that case the unit precedes instead of following the decimal; as sa-lekor, twenty-one; ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... be measured by the ounce measure of water, by which the valuation of different cubic inches will be avoided, and the common decimal tables of specific gravities will immediately give the weights of ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... Moon; but before the word went out of use, it came to be applied to twelfths of the visible diameter of the disc of the Sun or Moon, which was much more convenient. However, the word is now almost obsolete in both senses, and partial eclipses, alike of the Sun and of the Moon, are defined in decimal parts of the diameter of the luminary—tenths or hundredths according to the amount of precision which is aimed at. Where an eclipse of the Moon is described as being of more than 12 Digits or more than 1.0 ( 1 ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... rearrange in groups. It should have at least over a hundred of these cubes—if possible a thousand; they will be useful as toy bricks, and for innumerable purposes. Our civilization is now wedded to a decimal system of counting, and, to begin with, it will be well to teach the child to count up to ten and to stop there for a time. It is suggested by Mrs. Mary Everest Boole that it is very confusing to have distinctive names for eleven ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... his velocity figures, hoping against hope that he'd made a mistake somewhere, dropped a decimal point or forgotten to divide ...
— The Measure of a Man • Randall Garrett
... the error in their reckoning lay. These things the strangers probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic, but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of sixty years. This was probably the ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... but without detail, may now be given to him, as it will not appear extraordinary to him that a unit should represent ten by having its place, or column changed; and nothing more is necessary in decimal arithmetic, than to consider that figure which represented, at one time, an integer, or whole, as representing at another time the number of tenth parts into which that whole ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... sky luring his spirit out toward the infinite, with a pillow that was eight thousand miles thick. If I had been his teacher I might have called him lazy and shiftless as he lay there, because he was not finding how to place a decimal point, I'm glad, on the whole, that I was not his teacher, for I'd have twinges of conscience every time I read one of his big thoughts. I'd feel that, while he was lying there growing big, I was doing my best to make him little. When I was lying on my back there in the Pantheon in Rome, looking ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... thereof." As a consequence of giving this power to Congress, we have a uniform currency throughout the union. We have also, instead of the awkward system of reckoning by pounds, shillings, and pence, the more convenient decimal mode of calculation by dollars and cents. The old system was rendered the more inconvenient by the difference in the value of a pound, shilling, and penny in the different states. A merchant in a New England state, buying goods in New York or Philadelphia, must, in order to put prices upon ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... have pronounced themselves loudly in favor of the change. The tendency of the age is towards universality. It will occur to none to talk of French imitation because chemists make use of the excellent and universally applicable system of the decimal French weights and measures. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... several times been nearly destroyed by fire. The buildings now are mostly of stone, or of brick covered with plaster. The environs of the city, as you may see from the ship, are very pleasant. Now a word about the money of Sweden. The government has adopted a decimal system, of which the unit is the riksdaler, containing one hundred oere. The currency in circulation is almost entirely paper, though no bills smaller than one riksdaler are issued. The silver coins in use are the half and the quarter riksdaler, ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... cried Harry demonstratively, 'that's an infinitesimal fraction of Pi; that's a minute decimal of this great, sneering, ugly aggregate "society" that we have to deal with whether we will or no, and that rends us and grinds us to powder if only it can once get in the thin end of a chance. Take shaky bitter old Miss Catherine for your unit, multiply her ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... working for me, who would catch my questions hot from the bat, and fire back the answers before I could get into position to catch. Was a mighty particular cuss. Always worked everything out to the sixth decimal place. I had just about concluded he ought to have a wider field for his talents, when I asked him one day how the hams of the last week's run had been averaging in weight. Answered like a streak; but it struck me that for hogs ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... dollars of a later coinage than 1877 were called in, and a term was fixed after which they would cease to be legal tender. In 1885 decimal bronze coins were introduced. In July, 1886, a decree was published calling in all foreign and Chinese chop dollars [124] within six months, after which date the introducer of such coin into the Colony would be subject ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... universe, at least unless some new volition of a power capable of controlling the universe should supervene.(121) And if any particular state of the entire universe could ever recur a second time, all subsequent states would return too, and history would, like a circulating decimal of many figures, periodically ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... him," I can hear A.G.4 remarking to M.S.19 (decimal 9 recurring) as they met in the corridor on their way to lunch, "but I find him ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... rudimentary facts of exact science are now being learnt by direct intuition, as textures, and tastes, and colours are learnt. Employing the ball-frame for first lessons in arithmetic exemplifies this. It is well illustrated, too, in Professor De Morgan's mode of explaining the decimal notation. M. Marcel, rightly repudiating the old system of tables, teaches weights and measures by referring to the actual yard and foot, pound and ounce, gallon and quart; and lets the discovery of their relationships be experimental. The use of geographical models and models of the regular bodies, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... others to his will. He is a man of great physical strength and phenomenal endurance. He has been known to walk forty-eight hours at a stretch, and to pump ninety-six. His life is arduous and full of peril. A mistake in the working of a sum may keep him digging a fortnight without sleep. A repeating decimal in the answer ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... to count, the decimal system should be kept well in mind, and the teacher should see that thirteen means three-ten, and that the children can touch the three and the ten as they speak the word. Eleven and twelve ought to be called oneteen and twoteen, half in joke. The idea of ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... Walpurgisnight), he will count by fives all his sea-calves, or sea-forms, offspring of the sea (Halosydna). This counting by fives, is significant, hinting the earliest abstraction from the sensuous through number, specially by means of the five-system, though Homer knew well the decimal system (see Od. XVI, 245. Iliad II. 126). Menelaus with his companions is to take on this sea-form, and be counted with the rest, though in disguise; then when Proteus lies down to sleep with his herds or Forms, he is to be seized; that is, seized in ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... her, on which I wrote a question consisting of three figures to be multiplied by two figures. She looked upon it, and quivering her fingers in a manner which I thought very pretty, but of which I knew not whether it was art or play, multiplied the sum regularly in two lines, observing the decimal place; but did not add the two lines together, probably disdaining so easy an operation.' Johnson's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... twos. Thus, one is avicho; two, raboi. Above two, so many twos, as four is raboi-raboi; and six, raboi-raboi-raboi. Ten is expressed by spreading both hands, and twenty by bringing fingers and toes together. Thus the Caribs. Decimal numeration is found among all the American aborigines, ancient and modern, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... from 1888 to 1900 was secretary of the University of the State of New York, completely reorganizing the state library, which he made one of the most efficient in America, and establishing the system of state travelling libraries and picture collections. His "Decimal System of Classification" for library cataloguing, first proposed in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... count begins with the little finger of the left hand, and the tenth reaches the thumb. The eleventh count begins with the little finger of the right hand again, and so the count continues. The Igorot system is evidently decimal. One man, however, invariably recorded his eleventh count on his toes, from which he returned to the little finger of his right hand for ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... the calendar on a decimal basis seems a simple enough matter at first sight. But even here there are details that will have to ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... "has calculated by his mathematics that the progress of the species is forty-seven, decimal eight, more rapid than it was thirty-five ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... subsequent one, no matter after what interval of time, then the course of the events between these two moments would go on repeating itself for ever and ever afterwards in due order, down to the minutest detail, in an endless series of cycles like a circulating decimal. For the universe comprises everything; there could therefore be no disturbance from without. Once a cycle, always ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... is now very little of it. And usually it so works out that adopting the way which is easier on the men also decreases the cost. There is most intimate connection between decency and good business. We also investigate down to the last decimal whether it is cheaper to make or to buy ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... numbers in the following pages refer to specific cases, but not to the order of their treatment, since the classification is a decimal system used to indicate type, duration, ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... on the moneys of this part of the world. There is something in the simplicity of a decimal coinage which is revolting to the human mind; thus the French, in small affairs, reckon strictly by halfpence; and you have to solve, by a spasm of mental arithmetic, such posers as thirty-two, forty-five, or even a hundred halfpence. In ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... There can be no sum without an addition. You get an endless decimal fraction for quotient when your division does not work out evenly. I have not ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... it. Every "Boots" in the Kingdom does it. A man of learning had an article in an afternoon paper a few weeks ago which began thus: "It is now universally conceded by the French and the Americans that the decimal system is a failure," and he went on to concoct a scheme for our money that would be more "rational" and "historical." In this hot debate about Ulster a frequent phrase used is, "Let us see if we can't find the right formula to solve the difficulty"; their whole lives are formulas. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Greek Testament. He parses and makes Latin rather better than common. He has been through the twelve first books of Homer, but, as 't is more than a year since he recited that author, am afraid he has lost the greater part of what he then understood pretty well. In Arithmetic, vulgar and decimal, he is well versed. I have likewise taught him Trigonometry, Altimetry, Longimetry, Navigation, Surveying, Dialing, and Gauging. He has been through Martin's 'Philosophical Grammar' twice,—the greater part of ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... He is considered the founder of the present Democratic party in politics; and he gained imperishable fame as the author of the Declaration of Independence. He spent five years in France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin as minister to that country, and he introduced into the United States the decimal system of currency. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... with the poor mean depriving families and friends of sorely needed money, and the direct and indirect consequences are sometimes small and sometimes very great. These can be readily imagined. If instead of fines a prison sentence is given, a sort of decimal system has been worked out by chance or laziness or symmetry of figures; certainly it has been done wholly regardless of science, for there is no chance to apply science when it comes to degrading men and taking away a portion of their lives. Generally ten days is the shortest. From this the ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... principle of decimals. I thought I had made a discovery as confidently as Pythagoras did when he demonstrated the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid. I was proportionately annoyed when I afterwards discovered that I had been anticipated in finding out that 'a decimal is a fraction whose denominator is a unit with as many ciphers annexed as the numerator has places,' or rather in finding out precisely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... without a rhetorical pause to indicate the decimal points between her thoughts, "I was interested in what you said about immortality last Sunday. Now, I wonder if you know it is an actual fact that by breathing rhythmically thirty times, counting three while you inhale, three while you exhale and three while you hold ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... department, the works on Sanskrit grammar and lexicography are models of logical and analytical research. There are also valuable works on jurisprudence, on rhetoric, poetry, music, and other arts. The Hindu system of decimal notation made its way through the Arabs to modern nations, our usual figures being, in their origin, letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. Their medical and surgical knowledge ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... circumstances occurred which led to the resignation of the postmaster-general, the Hon. Charles Connell. The legislature having adopted the decimal system of currency in the place of the pounds, shillings and pence which had been the currency of the province since its foundation, Mr. Connell, in March, 1860, was authorized to obtain a new set of postage stamps of the denominations required for use in the ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... more than some hundreds of dollars. It is the gift of a poor woman in my congregation who depends upon her own labor for support. She gives this dollar to the A.M.A. from her hard economy." It may be that God's decimal pointing is not the same as ours ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... through your arm, and then square it, cube it, add decimal nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and then see how ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... two years I have been buried up yonder in the hills, with not enough to do in the summer season to keep me out of mischief. I am rather fond of mathematics, and I am telling you I have this thing figured out to the fourth decimal. If President Colbrith and his associates can be made to see that the multiplication of two by two gives an invariable resultant of four, there will be no receivership for the P. S-W. this year, ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... most accurate chronometric reckoning, old Mr. Beirne timed his proceedings to a decimal. The last line of the slow-read poem died in a deafening uproar without. Every bell in the city, it seemed, every whistle and chime, every firecracker and penny-trumpet and cannon (there was but one), to say nothing of many an inebriated human voice, hailed in a roaring diapason the birth of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the Duke, I've always had the greatest possible respect for him. The truth is, there's nothing special to be done at the present moment, and there's no reason why we shouldn't agree and divide the good things between us. The Duke has got some craze of his own about decimal coinage. He'll amuse himself with that; but it won't come to anything, and it ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... because of the confusion which often arises in people's minds as to the number of rings that they hear. When, therefore, the number of stations to be rung by code exceeds five, it is better to employ combinations of long and short rings, and a good way is to adopt a partial decimal system, omitting the numbers higher than five in each ten, and employing long rings to indicate the tens digits and short rings to indicate the ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... Popery with a profound earnestness. Gideon was taught, as soon as he could speak, to say, "No Pope, no Priest, no Surrender, Hurrah!" That was the first stage in his education. The second was taken at a National school where he learned the multiplication table and the decimal system with unusual ease. The master of a second-rate intermediate school heard of the boy's ability. Being anxious to earn the fees which a generous government gives to the masters of clever boys, this man offered to ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... John F. Dawaro. Daya. Dead, disposal of the, in Tangut, at Cambaluc; in Coloman; in China; in Dagroian; by the Battas. —— burning of the, see Cremation. eating the, see Cannibalism. De Barros, on Java; Singhapura; Janifs. Debt, singular arrest for. Decima, or Tithe on bequest. Decimal organisation of Tartar armies. Decius, Emperor. Deghans, Dehgans. Dehanah, village. Deh Bakri. De la Croix, Petis. Delhi, Sultans of. D'Ely, Mount, see Eli. Demoiselle Crane, anthropoides virgo. Deogir. Derbend, Wall of (see also Iron Gate of.). Deserts, haunted. Deserts ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... murtosigators are about one thousand, and are organized on the decimal system, every ten having a leader, and every ten leaders again a superior, as is the case also in the regular army. They receive a regular monthly pay, besides a share in all spoils. In time of comparative peace, while ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... faint dividing line between astronomy and mathematics, as between medicine and natural history. John of Seville was a notable mathematician, the compiler of a practical arithmetic, the first to make mention of decimal fractions, which possibly may have been his invention, and in the Zohar, the text-book of mediaeval Jewish mysticism, which appeared centuries before Copernicus's time, the cause of the succession of day and night is ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the use of fractions were taught daily. The use of the decimal in the American coinage is of great advantage; it is easier and more intelligible to children than the clumsy old system of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings. It is a system which would no doubt have been long ago adopted by England, if it had not been humiliating ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... his head on one side. He was rather proud of them, seeing he had utterly forgotten now how to work decimal fractions, and could not have done a quadratic equation ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system—tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numerals now. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a dozen gross a dozand, and a dozand ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells |
