I wasn't sure what to make this, a blog, a discussion or a document.
I settled on a document in this case.
We recently had an issue with the use of decimals and comma's in a data conversion process between a European based legacy application and a US based SAP system. This lead to a discussion about what countries us what notation and why.
So in the interest of project harmony, (nah.. was just curious), I decided to try to find out the answer. After finding several 'wrong' explanations in my Google quest, I finally discovered one article that seemed to be well researched and well written. (Surely you didn't think I was actually going to research this from scratch!?).
I could explain it all here again, but you're much better off reading the article directly.
So here it is:
http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/files/scienceeditor/v31n2p042-043.pdf
I doubt this will make a significant impact on anyone anywhere but I thought it might be something good that one day you'll be able to amaze and astound your friends and relatives with your knowledge of world cultures and why things work the way they do.
FF
