A rote decimal number notation w/ monospace font

I was watching C: Control – the Money of Soul and Possibility the other day (and also today) for the 3.5th time.

I realized I need a better notation for expressing numbers in exponential scale. So, I made one that borrows heavily from SI prefixes.

The formatting algorithm

To express a number with this notation, say, 123456.789…

1. list all its significant digits – 123456789
2. insert prefixes that’s adjacent to any significant digit – G123K456.789m
   • the full list of prefixes is QRYZEPTGMK.mµnpfazyrq
   • use the dot . for 10⁰
   • use capital K for 10³, for consistency’s sake

Because how it looks, I call this notation MK.mµ.

Make sure you use a monospace font to display the numbers in, or else you are missing the point. Better yet, design special glyphs for the prefixes and digits.

G123M456K789.
    M123K456.789m
        K123.456m789µ
            .123m456µ789n

To me, this is better than MeN or M.N × 10^x when I need to read a lot of numbers.

Also, consider Vega Lite. It has the best default out of all graphing libraries I’ve used.