Small Number
Within a set of positive numbers, a number is small if it is close to zero. A number is smaller if it is less than another number.
Within a set of positive and negative numbers there is ambiguity, because being closer to zero does not correspond to being less, but to being less in absolute value. Depending on context a negative number may be called "smaller" if it is closer to zero, or if it is more negative.
This article deals with positive numbers, and is also applicable to negative numbers by taking the absolute value.
Small numbers are numbers that are small compared with the numbers used in everyday life. Very small numbers often occur in fields such as chemistry, electronics and quantum physics.
Read more about Small Number: Fractions, Tiny Numbers in Science, Extremely Small Numbers, Infinitesimals
Famous quotes containing the words small number, small and/or number:
“There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature,
always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army—is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“My tendency to nervousness in my younger days, in view of the fact of a number of near relatives on both my father’s and mother’s side of the house having become insane, gave some serious uneasiness. I made up my mind to overcome it.... In the cross-examination of witnesses before a crowded court-house ... I soon found I could control myself even in the worst of testing cases. Finally, in battle.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)