Re: Nearest Five

[Herbert H Gottlieb <herbgottlieb@JUNO.COM>]

Your idea of breaking down the UK census into groups of 5 years
reminds me of a quip about a previous census of the UK which included
London, broken down by age and sex.

Herb Gottlieb from New York City
(Where the census is broken down in many other ways also)


On Sun, 22 Nov 1998 21:45:05 -0700 Jim Green <JMGreen@SISNA.COM> writes:
> At 10:11 AM 11/22/98 -0500, Herb wrote:
> |On Sat, 21 Nov 1998 17:04:33 -0700 Jim Green <JMGreen@SISNA.COM>
> writes:
> |>Isn't there a fancy way to say "round to the nearest five" or "ten"
> |>something like "nearest decade" or is it "decile"?  But what would
> |>five be?  Quintile????
>
> |No.... five would be "half-decade" to avoid addition of unnecessary
> |terminology.
>
> Well, Herb, I don't think that that does it: decade, decile, etc
> include
> the points between the ends.  I want to refer to the endpoints -- like
> the
> number next smaller (or larger)  which is evenly divisible by five (or
> ten
> or what ever).
>
> |Herb Gottlieb from New York City
> |(Where we use significant figure conventions in our physics courses.
> |These never require rounding out to the nearest quintile.)
>
> This is very nice, but suppose the collection of numbers is composed
> of
> integers -- the idea of significant figures doesn't compute in this
> case?
> --- as in the UK 1841 census the age recorded was the next lower age
> divisible evenly by five -- this is too much of a mouthful -- I was
> hoping
> that there was better language.
>
>
> Jim Green
> E-mail mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
> WWW http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen