Car Odometer numbers...

It's really conditioning - it takes me longer to say "forty point two" than "forty comma two". (In English - I've never said it in German.)

I didn't say a decimal was a whole number! And clearly you have misunderstood this and taken it to the extreme.
And I didn't say fractions were whole numbers either!

No need for the defensiveness. Nothing was taken to extreme.

This was your quote:

There are also irrational numbers which can not be represented as fractions.

yes...true; however, what were talking about is the set of numbers (and decimals/fractions) that appear on an odometer.

Somewhere in between 3.1 miles and 3.2 miles, the car does reach a distance of π miles.

Oh Jeeze. And any number multiplied by 4 is divisible by 2.

Please show me how that works. Let's start with the number 1.7

This is totally false. In the UK, we say aloud "point" for that little mark in between the 2 and the 5 in "2.5". I can't imagine why you think we say "dot".

1.7 x 4 = 6.8
6.8 /2 = 3.4
Q.E.D.

the answer is because I've heard quite a few Brits use it. Clearly, your experience is different.

Also, back off on the attitude.

A dot in Britain was e.g. "1·7" (actually a mid-dot).
Since the late '60's of ast century, it is "point". (That was quite confusing when I was communicating with the British navy in the 70's: many still used 'dot'.)

Car odometers work by counting the number of revolutions of the car wheels. In the old days, a flexible shaft (the "speedometer cable") was rotated at one end by a gear driven by an axle or a wheel, and the other end went in the speedometer and drove a bunch of gears . Some of the mechanism used the speed of rotation of the speedo cable to move a pointer showing the speed the car was going at. Another part drove a set of gears with numbers 0 to 9 printed around the circumference, behind a set of little square holes so that one number showed through each hole. These gears were designed so that each time a gear went round from 9 to 0 it drove the gear to its left around one tenth of a revolution. Typically they had had 6 gears (or cogs if you like) and a new speedo arrived at the car factory showing 000000.

The mechanism prior to the display cogs was designed so that every time the car moved one tenth of a mile (176 yards) the right most distance showing cog moved round by one number.

A new speedo would be fitted in a car on the production line and pretty soon the car might be moved a bit and after it had moved 176 yards it would show 000001 and after it had moved 352 yards it would show 000002 and so on. It was convenient to have the rightmost cog measuring tenths of a mile, even though miles are not a metric measurement. When the car had moved a whole mile the tenths cog would pass from 9 to 0 and the miles cog would move from 0 to 1.

A mechanical odometer with 6 digits showing tens of thousands, thousands, hundreds, tens of miles, miles, and tenths of miles would go right around from 999999 to 000000 when the car had done 100,000 miles. Not a lot of cars did in those days, so that was OK.

In my youth such a car was said to have "gone around the clock" and was usually not worth much.

Dishonest used car dealers would take a speedo out and use an electric drill inserted where the speedo cable goes in to drive the odometer back to show a lower figure.

Nowadays the speedos are electronic but it is still convenient to show tenths of a mile.

1/1 is a fraction, so is 6/3, and so is 15/5 and they are equal to whole numbers. 6.0 is a decimal and a whole number.

I was born in, educated in, and live in Brit-land, and we were taught in school to say "point"; the correct usage is "point", and the only people who might say "dot" for a decimal point are ignoramuses.


What "attitude"? If you want attitude, you can have some, e.g. please go and find some sand to pound. How's that?

You seem to be a nasty sort and attack quite unnecessarily. Feel free to ignore me.
Scroll on past in the future if you don't know how to be civil.

However, I told you what my experience is. Nowhere did I write or was speaking of all Brits...just some that have called it 'dot'.

Are you sure you don't mean the century before that? I started elementary school in the 1950s, and we were taught to say "point" when saying a decimal aloud, e.g "two point five tons" and I have never, ever heard anyone say "dot" for a decimal point in that way. Technically it is a "dot" I suppose, but we always say "point".

Ok. that was your experience. My experience with what I've heard was different. I never claimed I was sure that it was a correct phase or expression. I just related what I heard from some Brits.

You know how pub-crawlers are. Maybe they weren't Rhodes scholars like the ones you hang with?

I am rather sure, that was decided by the Decimal Currency Board (or whatever the name was).