order+of+magnitude

=Order Of Magnitude=

toc This article defines a word and clarifies its application and usefulness in scale studies. It is only the word's use in philosophy and rhetorci that applies to scale studies.

=Definition=

=Etymology= magnitude. late 14c., from L. magnitudo "greatness, bulk, size," from magnus "great" (see magnate) + -tudo, suffix forming abstract nouns from adjectives and participles.

Order, order (n.). early 13c., "body of persons living under a religious discipline," from O.Fr. ordre (11c.), from earlier ordene, from L. ordinem (nom. ordo) "row, rank, series, arrangement," originally "a row of threads in a loom," from Italic root *ored(h)- "to arrange, arrangement" (cf. ordiri "to begin to weave," e.g. in primordial), of unknown origin. Military and honorary orders grew out of the fraternities of Crusader knights.

Order of magnitude preserves the medieval notion of order, being "a system of parts subject to certain uniform, established ranks or proportions," used of everything from architecture to angels, and magnitude being greatness. The order of magnitude is a series of events in sequence by virtue of their greatness or bulk, that are also separated by a sense of established rank or proportion that bears on each step in turn, isolating one group from another.

=Wikipedia on Order of Magnitude=

An order of magnitude is the class of scale or magnitude of any amount, where each class contains values of a fixed ratio to the class preceding it. In its most common usage, the amount being scaled is 10 and the scale is the (base 10) exponent being applied to this amount (therefore, to be an order of magnitude greater is to be 10 times as large). Such differences in order of magnitude can be measured on the logarithmic scale in "decades" (i.e. factors of ten). Orders of magnitude are generally used to make very approximate comparisons, but reflect deceptively large differences. If two numbers differ by one order of magnitude, one is about ten times larger than the other. If they differ by two orders of magnitude, they differ by a factor of about 10^0. Two numbers of the same order of magnitude have roughly the same scale: the larger value is less than ten times the smaller value. This is the reasoning behind significant figures: the amount rounded by is usually a few orders of magnitude less than the total, and therefore insignificant. The order of magnitude of a number is, intuitively speaking, the number of powers of 10 contained in the number. More precisely, the order of magnitude of a number can be defined in terms of the common logarithm, usually as the integer part of the logarithm, obtained by truncation. For example, the number 4,000,000 has a logarithm (in base 10) of 6.602; its order of magnitude is 6. When truncating, a number of this order of magnitude is between 10^6 and 10^7. In a similar example, with the phrase "He had a seven-figure income", the order of magnitude is the number of figures minus one, so it is very easily determined without a calculator to be 6. An order of magnitude is an approximate position on a logarithmic scale. An order-of-magnitude estimate of a variable whose precise value is unknown is an estimate rounded to the nearest power of ten. For example, an order-of-magnitude estimate for a variable between about 3 billion and 30 billion (such as the human population of the Earth) is 10 billion. To round a number to its nearest order of magnitude, one rounds its logarithm to the nearest integer. Thus 4,000,000, which has a logarithm (in base 10) of 6.602, has 7 as its nearest order of magnitude, because "nearest" implies rounding rather than truncation. For a number written in scientific notation, this logarithmic rounding scale requires rounding up to the next power of ten when the multiplier is greater than the square root of ten (about 3.162). For example, the nearest order of magnitude for 1.7 × 10^8 is 8, whereas the nearest order of magnitude for 3.7 × 10^8 is 9. An order-of-magnitude estimate is sometimes also called a zeroth order approximation. An order-of-magnitude difference between two values is a factor of 10. For example, the mass of the planet Saturn is 95 times that of Earth, so Saturn is two orders of magnitude more massive than Earth. Order-of-magnitude differences are called decades when measured on a logarithmic scale. include component="page" page="portal to core concepts"