NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Abbreviation of Nautical Mile
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2005 Jun 7, 09:31 -0600
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2005 Jun 7, 09:31 -0600
On Jun 7, 2005, at 9:22 AM, Carl Herzog wrote:
> From a practical standpoint, it occurs to me that anyone likely to
> mistake the two in a given context probably shouldn't be on the
> water in
> the first place.
As someone who has written mathematical software, people commonly
assume various unit definitions and often there are clashes. In the
morning I may be working on scientific things where nanometers are
used, and in the afternoon I may be on my boat and in need of
nautical miles.
For example, what does 'log' stand for? Half of us would say log
base 10, the other half log base e. 'ln' however always means log
base e, so it is a better term to use as a function name. ('log10'
is the most common unambiguous name for common logarithms.)
Likewise, 'nm' is ambiguous in a larger scientific or calculating
context, hence my recommendation of 'nmi' for nautical mile.
Dan
