Astronomer: yeah, my favorite number is also, 1, 2, or 10, whichever way you prefer to write it.https://twitter.com/casuallye/status/1001989219965915136 …
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Uncertainties and scales of things in astronomy tend to be so large that “within an order of magnitude or two” is often considered reasonable, and, “ignoring some factors of two” or “ignoring some factors of order 1” is standard practice.
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It’s the range of size scales, too. For instance, stars go from ~10km neutron stars to ~1000 solar radii red giants.
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Are there second-order terms like order of magnitude? Like, something that covers 1e1-1e10?
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"Oh, it's a trillion not a thousand? Well, I was within the same order-of-order-of-magnitude"
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I’ve definitely heard people talk about “within a factor of 2” for a quantity that was already a logarithm of the physical variable, but not sure there’s a good term for this. Order of magnitude of the exponent?
End of conversation
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