The Birthday Paradox – On Jupiter, and Beyond (2012)

Re:The Birthday Paradox – On Jupiter, and Beyond (2012) by cbsks on Sunday March 03, 2019 @04:30PM (#19297039)

>Just as a reminder, we use n! to mean n(n−1)(n−2)(n−3)...3.2.1, so that means 6!=6.5.4.3.2.1=720. The exclamation mark is sometimes pronounced "pling" and this operation is called "factorial".

I’ve never heard the factorial symbol called “pling” before, I think we pronounced “6!” as “six factorial” in my undergraduate math classes in the US. Is “pling” a common term that I completely overlooked? Or is it more common in the UK?

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Re:The Birthday Paradox – On Jupiter, and Beyond (2012) by ColinWright on Sunday March 03, 2019 @04:48PM (#19297152)

In various circles it can be called pling, bang, or shriek. These are names for the symbol, whereas "factorial" is the name for the function.

In particular the opening line of a (U|Li)nix script is:

    #!<path>

and that's sometimes called the "hash bang".

From wikipedia[0]:

    In the printing world, the exclamation
    mark can be called a screamer, a gasper,
    a slammer, or a startler.

    In hacker culture, the exclamation mark
    is called "bang", "shriek", or, in the
    British slang known as Commonwealth
    Hackish, "pling".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark#Slang_and_oth...

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Re:The Birthday Paradox – On Jupiter, and Beyond (2012) by cbsks on Monday March 04, 2019 @01:48AM (#19299295)

Don’t forget about interrobang, aka “?!”

“Shriek” is a new one to me, however. What context is it used in?

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Re:The Birthday Paradox – On Jupiter, and Beyond (2012) by ColinWright on Monday March 04, 2019 @06:48AM (#19300533)

From Wikipedia[0]:

> The name given to "!" by programmers varies according to their background. In the UK the term pling was popular in the earlier days of computing, whilst in the United States, the term shriek was used. It is claimed that these word usages were invented in the US and shriek is from Stanford or MIT; however, shriek for the ! sign is found in the Oxford English Dictionary dating from the 1860s.

From another web site[1]:

> It is also called an exclamation mark or tellingly, in newspaper jargon, a shriek.

================

References:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark#Computers

[1] https://www.thoughtco.com/multiple-exclamation-points-169141...

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Re:The Birthday Paradox – On Jupiter, and Beyond (2012) by robinhouston on Sunday March 03, 2019 @04:33PM (#19297053)

I think it’s a rather old-fashioned British term. I haven’t heard it for years, but it used to be fairly common in sufficiently nerdy circles over here.

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