this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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The simple difference between ordinal and cardinal numbering.
Both are ordinal. One just start with 0 and the other with 1.
Americans use cardinal numbering for floors. How many you got? One, two, three. Europeans use ordinal numbering. They start at the ground (0) and count up from there.
Cardinal refers to number, while ordinal refers to sequence. Both American & British systems are ordinal, since changing the order of the floor numbers would make no sense. If they were cardinal, the order would be irrelevant.
Personally, I prefer the American system, since the bottom floor is what you enter on, and is therefore the first floor you interact with.
You're wrong about that, cardinal numbers are still ordered. You can't have Charles the Third come before Charles the Second (but there is no Charles the Zeroth).
It depends on the convention whether enumerating starts with the zeroth or first. In programming for example indices commonly start at zero. And the numbering of floors is another example of where starting at zero is quite common.
Cardinal numerals refer to amount (one, two, three) and ordinal refers to a position in a sequence (first, second, third). So your example is ordinal not cardinal.
Cardinal numbers refer to the size of a set. (10 apples in a basket) Ordinal numbers refer to the order of elements in a set (third apple put into the basket) you can rearrange an ordered set and retain the same cardinality (ten apples in the basket) but you'd change the order of the elements (switch the third and sixth apple).
The floor number you're on is an ordinal number. You can rearrange the elements while retaining the cardinality of the set, (the total number of floors does not change) but the order of the set is changed (the third floor is switched with the sixth floor).
Hope that clears up the confusion. Have a nice day.