Re: number formatting
Re: number formatting
- Subject: Re: number formatting
- From: Lance Bland <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 12:16:11 -0500
hi-
Sorry to belabor the subject, but let me put it another way ...
Say we've designed our own interface building application (hint) and we
have a text field. Now, I have to figure out the default behavior of a
text field that will satisfy most users. (I don't want a default
behavior that will satisfy almost no users or purpose). Do I design the
default behavior for the computer (i.e.: 0.4 shows up as .39999 or
whatever truncation effect it is) or do I design it for a human (who
would most likely want 0.4 to show up as 0.4)?
Ideally, I would do a double blind study and ask a large sample
population the question, then tabulate the results and pick the one
behavior that most people wanted as the default behavior. (I would
exclude all computers from the sample population so the study would be
skewed). The process would be algorithmic and no discussion would
follow. But in reality, for many reasons, figuring out what to do is
more ad hoc, so I belabor the issue.
What I want to know is: if I made a text field how would most users want
to see a numeric value in it? I'm not going to ask the computer that
question and I don't care about the computer in the first place.
In regard to what the default format of pi (or any well known
transcendental number) should be. That is a different issue, there is
some variability in what human users would want. Some might want it to a
certain accuracy and others may want to see the symbol pi (e, tau, nu,
etc.). The end user group may probably be split there. For example, we
have a scientific log graph that shows in exponential format. Most users
don't want to see the log base displayed as a floating point number,
they want to see the symbol, such as: 2 e^2 for base e, or in base 10 :
1 x 10^3. When we considered what the default behavior should be we
never asked the computer what it wanted.
If you have a reason to see a numeric value in a text field as a
truncated IEEE approximation to what a user enters then please let me
know so I can learn and also put that in our to do list.
You can respond to me at email@hidden if you wish, so the list doesn't
have to endure my obtuseness in this subject. Thank you for your
patience with me so far.
-lance
_______________________________________________
Lance Bland
System Administrator at VVI
mailto:email@hidden
http://www.vvi.com
Realtime, bulk and web data reporting and visualization
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