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27 October 2006

Peeve: people who use "finite" when they mean "non-zero." Zero is a finite number.

post by: DevilsAdvocate at: 10:37 | 10 comments

Peeve: people who hyphenate nonzero.

posted by knave 27 October | 10:52

Who the hell uses finite to mean non-zero? American ed-jew-ca-shun, sheesh.

posted by orthogonality 27 October | 10:57

No, it's not. It's not a number at all. It's a name for a quantity that is not a quantity at all, much like "infinity".

posted by Eideteker 27 October | 10:59

I interpreted that phrase as small-but-not-infinitessimally-small (infinitessimally small might be 1 particle per billion light years of space, while small might be 1 particle per 10 light years, or something). Of course, he probably could have meant non-zero.

posted by muddgirl 27 October | 11:35

and i of course meant light years cubed of space.

posted by muddgirl 27 October | 11:37

Can you make soup from those cubed light years?

posted by stilicho 27 October | 12:42

It's funny; you've made me realize that when I use "finite", I'm always thinking out the other direction on the number line. To me, vernacular "finite" means "Really big, but not infinite". It implies a stop sign on that big 'ol highway to infinity and beyond.

However, finite here is used as a synonym for quantifiable, and that definitely sounds ok to my ear.

posted by Triode 27 October | 13:31

It's scary, but it's all right. Everything is finite.

David Byrne said it, so it must be true.

posted by mudpuppie 27 October | 13:53

I use finite to mean not infinite, like there are a finite number of ten digit telephone numbers or a finite number of ways to screw up making coffee.

posted by StickyCarpet 28 October | 00:02

No, it's not. It's not a number at all.

WTF? How can you say zero is not a number? In some cases it's not considered a part of the set of natural numbers but it has always been a member of the integers, the rational and of course the real numbers.

Sheesh. To say zero is not a number is completely inaccurate. It even says so on wikipedia so it must be true!

posted by delmoi 28 October | 21:04

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