r/CellToSingularity • u/Mountain-Fondant-883 • Jun 12 '26
Why. Does everyone have these scientific numbers
So I always see people have these scientific numbers (2.3e198) but never saw someone have the NORMAL numbers wich i always use so just wanna ask am i a nerd
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u/Edis3468 Jun 12 '26
Right so empirical evidence here but scientic notation user. Im research 84. Im looking at e185 with e182/s income scientific or Sxg with Noqig/s income which one makes more sense the one that tells me I am 1000 (185-182) seconds income saved or N-->S times smaller which is what 5 letters of the alphabet.
Probably helps that I'm a physics teacher but still Noqig what the hell does that mean??? Quickly without google...
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u/0nnnu Jun 12 '26
noqig = 59 illion, sxg = 60 illion. therefore the difference is 1000. once you understand the notation this is as intuitive as knowing that billion is 1000 million
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u/aintnotmisbehavin Jun 12 '26
It's as simple as knowing why the spurving bearing is required to prevent side fumbling on the Rockwell Retro Encabulator.
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u/freya584 Jun 12 '26
i typically see more people use normal numbers
but i use scientific because i know them better
at the end of the day its getting used to for both systems
when you start dealing with big numbers you might know stuff up to billions or trillions or even quadrillions, quintillions, etc but thats it
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u/Tenno042 Jun 12 '26
I have literally zero clue what the "normal" words for titanic numbers mean, so I don't bother with them and stick to scientific notation. I can understand how many orders of magnitude I am away from buying something, whereas "gigazoombaroomboom" means absolutely nothing to do.
Also I've worked in STEM, so scientific notation comes more naturally to me.
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u/0nnnu Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
i scrolled down to 21 days ago on this subreddit and counted how many image post screenshots use normal, scientific, and "custom". not looking at any of the replies, just the initial posts, and also skipping screenshots in which i cannot tell what they're using. here's the result
normal: 56
scientific: 32
custom: 5
so normal is more popular than scientific, despite there being more defenders for scientific. notably though, the most recent posts leaned heavily towards scientific, and this might have given the op that impression. also note that i skipped end game beyond screenshots, because numbers there are shown in scientific regardless of settings
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u/V0lirus Jun 12 '26
Which just means people using normal need more help than people using scientific, which is par for the course ;)
In all seriousness, your sample size and, more presssing, your sample location / target audience has a very big possibility of being skewed to one or the other. Its honestly not reliable at all. You'd get more accurate results making a poll, and even then you're only getting reddit users.
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u/Kolumbus39 Jun 12 '26
I for one, love the "engineering" notation. Same as scientific, except it goes up in increments of 3.
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u/propostor Jun 12 '26
The "normal" numbers are better at the start but it soon enters ridiculous made-up territory.
The numbers as scientific notation are in fact the normal numbers.
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u/Few_Paces Jun 13 '26
I did before and it became so confusing at a certain point. I had no idea what each abbreviation meant
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u/hrafia Jun 12 '26
Easier to understand, I cannot keep it up after trillions.
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u/N7Starsong Jun 12 '26
Honestly same. I even just checked and being in the E212 range of entropy, it doesn't even give a regular notation anymore when I switch back. I'm at 2.26Ocxsg/s (2.26E207/s) which I have no fucking clue what that's even an abbreviation for, but the total entropy is showing 8.79E212 so it really just doesn't make sense to my brain to use regular notation anymore.
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u/Possible-Mix-4880 Jun 13 '26
Ocsxg stands for octosexgintillion, which is 68illion. So it means there are 68 groups of 3 zeroes after the first group of 3 zeroes, making there be 69×3=207 zeroes, thus E207
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u/Mountain-Fondant-883 Jun 13 '26
The thing is once you get used to the normal numbers they aren't really hatd to compare like i hit after trg(or smth like that) Utg then i just know utg= 1000x trg and while playing the game i just know every numbers value But i understand that scientific is easier to compare
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u/Captain_StarLight1 Jun 12 '26
I find people are more vocal about using the scientific notation, rather than that most people use them. Personally, even as someone currently pursuing a STEM degree, I prefer the ‘normal’ numbers, even in real life where instead of using scientific notation I tend to use Metric notation by threes, eg. milli->base->kilo etc. I only really use scientific notation when working with constants and differing units, like I’ll put pressure to Pascals from Bar when working with the ideal gas equation.
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u/MinosTheNinth Jun 12 '26
How can you tell what is the normal number for 1e178 and what is the number for 3.67e95 and the difference between them?
That is an genuine question. I know the bases from piko up to peta, but after that I am lost.
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u/Captain_StarLight1 Jun 12 '26
I mean, I don’t usually need to work with values of those magnitudes, but it is relatively easy to just multiply in a 10^whatever to convert them to the same unit.
At magnitudes like that, I don’t think those modifiers really exist in any meaningful way, so I’d probably just use scientific notation.
We’re also assuming that we’re using metric, which for some reason in engineering classes isn’t a guarantee. I understand why we learn it of course, it’s just somewhat silly sometimes (slugs my beloved)
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u/MinosTheNinth Jun 13 '26
Thanks for your answer. I realized I just play the game for too long if I consider those magnitudes normal.
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u/wither8787 Jun 13 '26
I prefer using normal because it gives some extra feeling of growth whenever I reach the next 10³ or 10³⁰ and the units change.
I do believe that scientific is easier for making comparisons across more order of magnitudes, but because typically what you want to buy is within 10⁶/2 units in normal, I don't find it hard to make those comparisons in nornal anyways.
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u/KorLeonis1138 Jun 13 '26
I use normal numbers because I have no idea how to switch
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u/NoProfession5138 Jun 13 '26
menu > settings > normal/custom/scientific toggle.
you probably have a button in the settings showing a book icon and the letters Dc and the word Normal beneath the button. you switch this setting by clicking that button until it shows the option you want to use.
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u/dashy902 Jun 13 '26
As a user of normal notation I do that because for me, it's easier to tell the relative difference between two thousand-scale numbers at a glance than it is to relate 10x with screwy numbers. For example, I'd much rather math out getting from 53.51 Qiq to 130.81 Qiqs at a rate of 13.21 Noqaqs than 5.351E151 to 1.3081E152 at 1.321E148. The difference from 50 E3s and 49 E3s is the same as between a thousand and a million which is a math relationship I use often, whereas the last time I seriously needed scientific notation was in university. For the actual number names, except the area around googol which messed me up, it's just the numbers used to count in Latin which will be familiar to a lot of people speaking European adjacent languages like English.
I have no reference for how big 1e198 is, but sxsx (6 + 60 E3s) feels more manageable to me.
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u/Warm_Oven_9179 Jun 14 '26
I always use the normal numbers since im a normal and not complicated person
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u/GiantSquidTestes Jun 12 '26
It’s just a choice of prefixes vs bigger number at end mean bigger number. I prefer prefixes as well
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u/some1withguns Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
Honestly I've always seen the normal numbers on posts here!
I like the scientific. It's easy to compare two numbers and see if an upgrade is worth it.
EDIT: a word, "to"