[PD] Newbie/non-mathbie question

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On Mon, 8 Mar 2004, KEYES CHRISTOPHER JAY wrote:
> '4.41e+008' in '1e+007' seconds...hmm, for me, not so good.
> Can anyone shed some light as to what 'numbers' those represent? Are they 'C++' things or a hexadecimal things?

this is a conveniant and more or less common way of writing long numbers
(very big or very small). the part before the "e" shows the details, the
"e" stands for 10 and the part after the "e" for how many 10s there are.
so the numbers you mention above resolve to:
4.41 x 10 pow 8 = 441.000.000
1    x 10 pow 7 =  10.000.000

2.3e-005 would be
2.3  x (1 / 10 pow 5) = 0.000023

hope that helps.
ub