[SOLVED] Standard for expressing a 'range' of values?

[juz_ad]

Another (pedantic) notation/terminology question (that's been bugging me :roll: )...

Is there an accepted way writing a range of values e.g. 100R to 500R or -6 Volts to +8 Volts?

For my own notes I've been writing e.g. 100:500R or -6:+8V ...neat and simple - but is ':' generally used for ratios like gears or scale?

Thanks in advance.

 

[SherpaDoug]

A colon ) is usually for a ratio. A hyphen (-) is usually for a range. But a hyphen is easily mystaken for a negative sign so you must either reverse the order of the numbers (-5V - +5V) or use parens ( +5V - (-5V) ) or use "to" ( +5V to -5V).

It is simple crap like this that crashes Mars probes!

 

[keith1200rs]

100R..500R might be a better way.

Keith.

 

[Severo]

Mathematicaly you can express it the following way:

[100R, 500R] or [100, 500]R

The bracket means that the extreme value is included in the interval. Parenthesis means that it is not, for example, (100R, 500R) would be a range from 100R to 500R but the actual values of 100R and 500R are not included.

You can mix them up

(-6V, 8V] means and interval from -6V to 8V but the -6V is not included in the interval.

 

[SherpaDoug]

Your mathematicaly defined expressions look nice, but I have never encountered them in engineering. Additionally in standard "Windows" nomenclature comma serarated values like "100, 500" would indicate only those two distinct values. Ie. if you print pages 100,500 you would get two sheets of paper.

I may start using (), [], (], etc in my own notes but I won't expect anyone else to understand them without explanation. Imagine if you could program a "for loop" as I=(1,10]