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They're fractions of a day, in long floating point format!
I've seen a lot of ways to represent numbers, like the abjad system Arabic mathematicians used twelve hundred or so years ago, where each letter of the alphabet stood for an arbitrary numerical value (somewhat like Roman numerals), according to the order:
' b j d h w z H T y k l m n s ` f S q r sh t th kh dh D Z gh
usually remembered as "abjad hawaz HuTiya kalaman sa`afaS qurishat thakhudh DaZigh", hence the name abjad; but of course the vowels didn't count.
' through T = 1 through 9,
y through S = 10 through 90,
q through Z = 100 through 900,
gh = 1000.
About the only thing this is good for is adding up the letters of someone's name to see if they equal 666.
Eventually the Arabs borrowed what we know as "Arabic numerals" from India and stopped this silliness; but can you imagine doing arithmetic, let alone any sort of higher mathematics, in abjad? It boggles the mind...
...almost as much as adding and subtracting minutes and seconds in floating point.
I've seen a lot of ways to represent numbers, like the abjad system Arabic mathematicians used twelve hundred or so years ago, where each letter of the alphabet stood for an arbitrary numerical value (somewhat like Roman numerals), according to the order:
' b j d h w z H T y k l m n s ` f S q r sh t th kh dh D Z gh
usually remembered as "abjad hawaz HuTiya kalaman sa`afaS qurishat thakhudh DaZigh", hence the name abjad; but of course the vowels didn't count.
' through T = 1 through 9,
y through S = 10 through 90,
q through Z = 100 through 900,
gh = 1000.
About the only thing this is good for is adding up the letters of someone's name to see if they equal 666.
Eventually the Arabs borrowed what we know as "Arabic numerals" from India and stopped this silliness; but can you imagine doing arithmetic, let alone any sort of higher mathematics, in abjad? It boggles the mind...
...almost as much as adding and subtracting minutes and seconds in floating point.
