0.000009
It has 5 zeroes. Counting these is tedious, especially with smaller numbers. That is a millionth though. Or a micro- something. Try a number over 1, like:
900000.0
So that's inefficient too. This has obviously been corrected with comma separation like so:
90,000
Ninety thousand is discerned much faster like this. The separation of the 5 zeroes into a set of 2 and 3 allows this. So why not apply this to any number n, where 0 < |n| < 1 ? Using my previous example:
0.00,000,9
This makes it easy to see that the value is a millionth. Note that the first comma separates only the 10th and 100th places. W/o doing this, the value wouldn't reflect the 'larger than 1' corresponding value. I find it faster to use this technique over having to mentally rearrange the last comma each time.
Although I thought of this a while ago, I haven't really employed it but will do so now. Scientific notation can fix this generally, but I like visualizing all the place values.
Edit: Don't let the asymmetry bother you. The one's place is really the 'center', and the decimal that represents values less than 1 is actually arbitrary.
