Two By Four

On the same topic, of different usages of English for terms/operations important to maths and programming, but something I have only seen from the Indian Sub-Continent:

The guys at DurgaSoft, who have taught millions Java over the years, commonly pronounce:

2 * 4 as "two into four"
and
2 / 4 as "two by four"

I normally always say "times or multiply" or "divided by", but if I ever shorten it, I would be using the abbreviations as:
2 * 4 as "two by four" [this is actually common in American English, tho I never say it]
and
2 / 4 as "two into four"

It is not just the DurgaSoft guys, I notice many Indian instructors using the terminology thusly.
So far, it seems to be limited to Indian dialects of English.

More confusion...

Jesse Silverman wrote:. . . Indian dialects of English. . . .

They have all sorts of differences; they think requesting somebody, “Kindly do this or that,” or saying, “With all due respect,” are courteous things to say.

One Indian-English phrase that I hear quite often is: Please do the needful

Jesse, are you saying you have a doubt about what "two by four" means?

Yeah, that's a problematic one - especially since (a) the two meanings are opposites, and (b) in many situations, they may be equally plausible - you often can't just say "well obviously they meant this" using common sense.

At least with flammable vs inflammable, we can be reasonable confident that what was meant is that the given item can burst into flames, for either word.  And if you assume that, you're probably going to be appropriately cautious.  The cost of incorrectly assuming that something may burst into flames is much less than the cost of incorrectly assuming that something won't burst into flames.

Jesse Silverman wrote:. . . 2 / 4 as "two into four" . . .

I always thought 2 ÷ 4 was, “four into two.” Twobifour is of course a size of wood. Though most people use those strange Frenach measurements nowadays and it comes out as fiftybyhundred.

Mike Simmons wrote:Jesse, are you saying you have a doubt about what "two by four" means?

Yeah, that's a problematic one - especially since (a) the two meanings are opposites, and (b) in many situations, they may be equally plausible - you often can't just say "well obviously they meant this" using common sense.

At least with flammable vs inflammable, we can be reasonable confident that what was meant is that the given item can burst into flames, for either word.  And if you assume that, you're probably going to be appropriately cautious.  The cost of incorrectly assuming that something may burst into flames is much less than the cost of incorrectly assuming that something won't burst into flames.

Yes!  Variety is the spice of life, as long as we understand each other.
Half of the English-speaking world (in numbers of programmers and QA) meaning the exact opposite of the other half when using not similar, but identical, phraseology seems like a potential workplace safety hazard to me.  There are so many where the possibility for misunderstanding is low, and those are just cute and fun, or at worst, annoying if you are grumpy.

But it is only fun and games until someone loses an eye        so let's put pronouncing '*' and '/' with the "Hey, someone could get blown up if we keep doing this like this" category.  At least being aware of it, people can quickly double check if you have a full-duplex connection with the speaker -- this does not work great for recorded audio or written material.  In video, hopefully the code is right on the screen at that moment...

Campbell Ritchie wrote:

Jesse Silverman wrote:. . . 2 / 4 as "two into four" . . .

I always thought 2 ÷ 4 was, “four into two.”

Yup.  Though it's more obvious when the numerator is greater than the denominator.  When you see 20 / 5 = 4 it can be described as "5 goes into 20 4 times", which makes sense.    But for 2 / 4... well, "4 goes into 2 half a time" isn't quite as intuitive.  Which, I believe, sometimes results in people sometimes flipping it around accidentally...

Can't find where this is from, but matt Parker refers to it (Humble Pi, Harmondsworth:Penguin, 2019 pages 81‑77): if Obamacare costs $360,000,000 a year you can give each of the 317,000,000 people in the USA $1,000,000 instead.