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> That said, I don’t know how to pronounce “3e5”

"Three to the exponent of five." Or "Three Exponent Five." Or "Three Exp Five."

> Seeing this, some madman decided that 1 bel should always describe a 10× increase in power, even if it’s applied to another base unit. This means that if you’re talking about watts, +1 bel is an increase of 10×; but if you’re talking about volts, it’s an increase of √10×

This is power vs. amplitude. This is the specific reason the dB is so useful in these systems.

> the value is meaningless unless we know the base unit and the reference point

No you just need to know if you have a power or a root-power quantity. Which should generally be obvious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_root-power,_and_field_q...

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bigiain 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> > That said, I don’t know how to pronounce “3e5”

> "Three to the exponent of five." Or "Three Exponent Five." Or "Three Exp Five."

Somehow, you need to distinguish between 3^5 (=243), 3 x e^5 (=~445.24), and 3 x 10^5 (=300,000).

I'd pronounce "3e5" and "three times ten to the 5" in most cases.

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timewizard 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> 3^5 (=243)

Three to the power of five.

> 3 x e^5

Three times the fifth power of e. Or Three times e's fifth power.

> 3 x 10^5 (=300,000).

Three to the exponent of five.

A calculator user once suggested "decapower." I think exponent and "EXP" are comfortable and easy to say and are ingrained to most old school calculator users. Which is also why I think "e's fifth power" can be a more natural sequence.

	▲	bigiain a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Three to the exponent of five. I think that's still ambiguous. The base of the exponent is implied, and there are decent arguments or fields in which the assumed base of 10 isn't universal. In your "Three times e's fifth power." version, you needed so specify e. I think for accuracy it's also needed to specify 10 in that "Three to the exponent of five." case. (Having said that, there are certainly cases where the 10 as the base of the exponent will be clear/unambiguous from the context. )

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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ggm 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> No you just need to know if you have a power or a root-power quantity. Which should generally be obvious.

There has to be a Yogi Berra witticism about obvious things. Suffice to say fools like me work unadvisedly in spaces where this kind of axiom isn't obvious, because we're simpletons.