Timeline for Is there a shorter term for "divided by" in American English?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 5, 2011 at 13:32 | comment | added | kitukwfyer | @TRiG when I say "into" I'm thinking like "5 into fourths" or "5 turned into 4 pieces," not "5 goes into 4." As I said, it tends to catch people up. :) | |
| May 5, 2011 at 12:43 | comment | added | TRiG | @kitukwfyer, into is the other way around, though: five over four is four into five. | |
| Mar 6, 2011 at 21:45 | vote | accept | Corey | ||
| Feb 21, 2011 at 13:35 | comment | added | PLL | @Martijn: the pronunciation I’m familiar with is "a choose b". I’m sure there are other options, though! | |
| Feb 21, 2011 at 13:17 | comment | added | Martijn | I also expected "over" to mean binomial coefficients, since in Dutch (my native tongue), 'over' is exactly the word used for those cases. @PLL: how are they called in English? | |
| Feb 21, 2011 at 8:35 | comment | added | Benjol | @jae, strains to avoid traces of sarcasm :) | |
| Feb 20, 2011 at 19:10 | comment | added | Femaref | don't worry jae, I had the same connotation in mind. native germans speaker as well. | |
| Feb 20, 2011 at 18:42 | comment | added | Jürgen A. Erhard | wipes egg off face I knew not being a native speaker would show! Dammit. In German, it's "a über b", which would translate to "a over b", but... yes, I screwed up. Well, nobody's perfect, not even I. | |
| Feb 20, 2011 at 17:45 | comment | added | PLL | @jae: I’ve only ever heard “over” used to mean “divided by”. What is the other usage you’re familiar with for it? I could imagine it also getting used for the “choose”/“combinations” notation for binomial coefficients, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard that. | |
| Feb 20, 2011 at 17:40 | comment | added | Orbling | @jae: It most certainly does not. Unfortunately the state of understanding of mathematics is so poor, that people think division, fractions, ratio, odds are all different things. They are not. | |
| Feb 20, 2011 at 17:27 | comment | added | kitukwfyer | I almost always use "over." I also use "in(to)" sometimes, but that usually takes people a minute to figure out. Everyone I've worked homework problems with understands "over," though. | |
| Feb 20, 2011 at 16:44 | comment | added | bye | No, it doesn't -- it merely describes the statement as if it were written in fractional notation rather than as if it were written using the division sign (÷). | |
| Feb 20, 2011 at 16:38 | comment | added | Jürgen A. Erhard | "5 over 4" has a very different meaning in mathematics. | |
| Feb 20, 2011 at 16:24 | history | answered | RedGrittyBrick | CC BY-SA 2.5 |