[Python-ideas] real numbers with SI scale factors

[Terry Reedy]

On 8/28/2016 9:44 PM, Ken Kundert wrote:

> The way the scientific and engineering communities predominately write real
> numbers is by using SI scale factors.

I don't believe it, not with naked scale factors as you have proposed. 
I have worked in science and I never saw naked scale factors until this 
proposal.  The scale factors are usually attached to units.

> These numbers almost always represent
> physical quantities, so it is common to write the number with scale factor and
> units.

The scale factor is part of the unit, and people now learn this in grade 
school, I presume.

>  So for example, the distance to Andromeda is 780kpc, the pressure at the
> bottom of the Mariana Trench is 108MPa, the total power produced by a typical
> hurricane is 600TW, the number of base pairs in human DNA is 3.2Gb, and the Bohr
> radius is 53pm.

These are all scaled units and to me not relevant to the proposed 
addition of scale factors without units.

At this point I quit reading.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy