Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

30 Jun 2005, 10:03 a.m.

Superstition

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Even in correspondence, I avoid writing a number followed by an exclamation point, since that would be a factorial.

"Good news! He paid $35!"

after all really means

"Good news! He paid $1.0333148 x 1040."