Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 205.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:16:44 +0100
From: lachance@origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: Whole and natural numbers
Willard,
Recently in a posting to the TEI-list Lou Burnard listed some formatting
systems and indicated that "some such systems numbered things starting
from zero and others from one"
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0308&L=tei-l&F=&S=&P=5469
I found an echo of the whole numbers/natural numbers theme. In prepping
for a project, I note that Javascript begins counting with zero.
Could some one explain why certain languages begin with zero and others
with one?
I have some vague impression that it is related to the treatment of
arrays and Cartesian coordinates where the origin is represented by the
pair (0,0). However my vague impression doesn't explain why certain other
systems begin with 1. Would appreciate an explanation by anyone in the
know.
Thanks
-- Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
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