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How come building floors are numbered from the bottom up

IronWing

IronWing

No Lifer
but drawers in a cabinet are numbered from the top down?

How come screen coordinates place 0,0 in the upper left (similar to spread sheet cells) when mathematical graphs place 0,0 in the lower left (for positive numbered graphs)?

How come Europeans kept the right to left order of Arabic numerals when they adopted them?

Why are organics good and phosphates good but organophosphates are bad?
 
IronWing said:
but drawers in a cabinet are numbered from the top down?
Click to expand...
Didn't know drawers were numbered.
How come screen coordinates place 0,0 in the upper left (similar to spread sheet cells) when mathematical graphs place 0,0 in the lower left (for positive numbered graphs)?
Click to expand...
to make life difficult so people couldn't "do computers", therefore ensuring job security
How come Europeans kept the right to left order of Arabic numerals when they adopted them?
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure my numbers go left to right
 
lxskllr said:
Didn't know drawers were numbered.

to make life difficult so people couldn't "do computers", therefore ensuring job security

I'm pretty sure my numbers go left to right
Click to expand...
Nope, they are right justified and grow to the left. We "read" them left to right but they are right to left in nature.
 
IronWing said:
Nope, they are right justified and grow to the left. We "read" them left to right but they are right to left in nature.
Click to expand...
Ah, I see. I'd have to give it some thought, but that's probably the best way. The most relevant number will be left, and can be viewed farther right as necessary, which would be comfortable for westerners. Or maybe I'm just used to it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
IronWing said:
but drawers in a cabinet are numbered from the top down?

How come screen coordinates place 0,0 in the upper left (similar to spread sheet cells) when mathematical graphs place 0,0 in the lower left (for positive numbered graphs)?

How come Europeans kept the right to left order of Arabic numerals when they adopted them?

Why are organics good and phosphates good but organophosphates are bad?
Click to expand...
Answers are simple:
1. Try to enter building from top floor.
2. Try to put your most important stuff to bottom drawer in your desk.
3. Open excel and go 100 cells down and start typing something from down to up.
4. Write down 10 digits from right to left.
5. Don't know the last one, but if you do the above 4 before you go nuts from being annoyed you have your answers on why.
 
If they added more floors they'd have to renumber every single floor in the building and everyone would need to get new business cards made. 😛
 
Living in the US, I told the staff of the company I worked for my new office was on the 1st floor. Nobody could find me because they were looking on the ground floor. Silly Americans.
 
Malogeek said:
Living in the US, I told the staff of the company I worked for my new office was on the 1st floor. Nobody could find me because they were looking on the ground floor. Silly Americans.
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Well because that is the first floor of the building, it was the first one built...
 
How come screen coordinates place 0,0 in the upper left (similar to spread sheet cells) when mathematical graphs place 0,0 in the lower left (for positive numbered graphs)?
Click to expand...
My guess would be that this is due to the fact we read text from left to right starting from the top and proceeding down therefore placing the first character in the upper left corner made sense.
 
Darwin333 said:
Well because that is the first floor of the building, it was the first one built...
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It was in jest. English/Australian standard is ground floor then 1st floor. American standard is 1st floor then 2nd floor. No one is right (unless you're American), it's just a cultural nomenclature difference.
 
Malogeek said:
It was in jest. English/Australian standard is ground floor then 1st floor. American standard is 1st floor then 2nd floor. No one is right (unless you're American), it's just a cultural nomenclature difference.
Click to expand...

I'm just used to it, never heard of a different way I guess. I would feel weird if I was on the 1st floor and if the building was on fire I couldn't just walk out of a broken window and instead had to jump.
 
Darwin333 said:
I'm from New Orleans, we don't have basements here because of the whole below sea level thing. Do most multi-story structures up north have basements?
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Around here(MD), virtually every house has a basement of some kind. Exceptions being in a flood plain, and for very cheap houses to shave costs. Same with big buildings. They go down as well as up.
 
Well graphs are really sections of a Cartesian plane so the origin is based in the middle and thus in a positive quadrant, the lower left.
 
lxskllr said:
Around here(MD), virtually every house has a basement of some kind. Exceptions being in a flood plain, and for very cheap houses to shave costs. Same with big buildings. They go down as well as up.
Click to expand...

Why? Is it cheaper to dig a big ass hole and put in a basement rather than building another floor up or something?
 
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