[plug] Calculator that uses commas , for thousands seperation

[Gavin Chester]

On Tue, 2005-07-12 at 11:19 +0800, Richard Meyer wrote:

-snip-

> > Anyway it was along the lines of Australia will be adopting the
> > numerical formats supported by the EU. This, from memory, involves
> > replacing the humble '.' decimal separator with a ',' and I think spaces
> > in between each "set" of thousand. Or something of that nature. Can't
> > remember the time frame, I think it was something like 10 years. 
> > 
> > There was also something about date separators changing from '/' to
> > something else.. 
> > 
> > Others please feel free to jump in and correct any mistakes or
> > oversights, coffee hasn't kicked in yet.. 
> 
> Yup, that's the European format
> 123,456.78  becomes
> 123 456,78  Gonna confuse the crap out of you for a few years  ;-)
> 
> Had it in South Africa since the seventies.

What does this mean in terms of teaching the kids the SI* units that
have existed for god knows how long as the standard for all/most
disciplines?  This convention you're talking about breaks with that as
far as I can see, so it is just rubbish to be confusing the kids and
public IMHO.

*(SI = Systeme International d'Unites - you have to say it with a French
accent ;-) for those not familiar)