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Paper sizes

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Re: Paper sizes

#21

Post by amalcon »

talideon wrote: post #12
StefanKarpinski wrote: post #5

When someone claims uncritically that the ratio of any two integers is √2, I get a little edgy. I'm also having a hard time following this simplification: A / √A = A × A / A = A Huh? This only holds if √A = A = 1. I haven't checked the rest, but this doesn't give me much confidence. Of course, knowing those Europeans, these sizes do probably make tons of sense on paper (see what I did there?), even if this isn't the…

There's nothing crazy here. It just means that if the length of the long side is √2 times the size of short side. That has the nice property that you can bisect the sheet and get two smaller sheets where the ratio between the long and short edges is maintained, which makes it standardising a whole bunch of other things much more straightforward.

I believe that gp's point is that this is impossible, what with √2 being an irrational number. It is pretty close (4 significant digits), but of course not exact.

Re: Paper sizes

#22

Post by talideon »

mrottenkolber wrote: post #10
talideon wrote: post #3

I've tried in the past to explain how awesome the sqrt(2) ratio used as the basis of DIN/ISO page sizes is, but there are some very dumb people on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821947

Haha that thread is great... good old metric system.

It was like talking to a brick wall. A very dumb brick wall that couldn't get it through their head that the units didn't matter, and that what mattered was the ratio.

Re: Paper sizes

#23

Post by johansch »

Anecdote: the office management/finance/HR people in the european office where I work really, really hate US Letter formats, because they don't really fit in "normal" binders.

They're the ones who really suffer from this, because they're the only people who deal with paper format documents these days, I guess.

Re: Paper sizes

#24

Post by eterm »

skore wrote: post #11
anonu wrote: post #2

I've lived in the US and also in a country that used the A-series extensively. While I've always appreciated the beauty and math of the A-series, I find the aspect-ratio of the US Letter paper to be much more appealing. A4 tends to be too long and too narrow.

From the article: > US Letter: 216 mm x 279 mm > A4: 210 mm × 297 mm so it's 18mm longer while being 6mm narrower. At that small a difference, I would assume that a preference of one over the other is similar to that of metric vs. imperial - the one you were raised on just seems right . Which one did you grow up with?

But it is both 18mm and 6mm narrower, so it goes from 1.414 to 1.29 in terms of ratio.

In other words A4 seems 10% narrower in terms of shape, which isn't insignificant.

Having said that, I'd rather keep A4 given the useful properties described in the article.

Re: Paper sizes

#25

Post by johnchristopher »

skore wrote: post #11
anonu wrote: post #2

I've lived in the US and also in a country that used the A-series extensively. While I've always appreciated the beauty and math of the A-series, I find the aspect-ratio of the US Letter paper to be much more appealing. A4 tends to be too long and too narrow.

From the article: > US Letter: 216 mm x 279 mm > A4: 210 mm × 297 mm so it's 18mm longer while being 6mm narrower. At that small a difference, I would assume that a preference of one over the other is similar to that of metric vs. imperial - the one you were raised on just seems right . Which one did you grow up with?

For what it's worth: I am a European, still living in Europe and surrounded by A4 and I envy American's US Letter format.

I almost always have the feeling that A4 is too big.

Re: Paper sizes

#26

Post by nileshtrivedi »

skore wrote: post #11
anonu wrote: post #2

I've lived in the US and also in a country that used the A-series extensively. While I've always appreciated the beauty and math of the A-series, I find the aspect-ratio of the US Letter paper to be much more appealing. A4 tends to be too long and too narrow.

From the article: > US Letter: 216 mm x 279 mm > A4: 210 mm × 297 mm so it's 18mm longer while being 6mm narrower. At that small a difference, I would assume that a preference of one over the other is similar to that of metric vs. imperial - the one you were raised on just seems right . Which one did you grow up with?

That's a 9.5% difference in the aspect ratio. I don't think that's small.

Re: Paper sizes

#27

Post by delinka »

StefanKarpinski wrote: post #5

When someone claims uncritically that the ratio of any two integers is √2, I get a little edgy. I'm also having a hard time following this simplification: A / √A = A × A / A = A Huh? This only holds if √A = A = 1. I haven't checked the rest, but this doesn't give me much confidence. Of course, knowing those Europeans, these sizes do probably make tons of sense on paper (see what I did there?), even if this isn't the…

The article's not claiming that the ratio of any two integers is √2, he's claiming that when the ratio of the lengths of the sides (the aspect ratio) is √2 that it's easy to keep that ratio with smaller pages by cutting the longer dimension in half.

As for your equation above, A/√A != A x A / A, but I'm not seeing where in the article you got this either.

Re: Paper sizes

#28

Post by willvarfar »

talideon wrote: post #22
mrottenkolber wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha that thread is great... good old metric system.

It was like talking to a brick wall. A very dumb brick wall that couldn't get it through their head that the units didn't matter, and that what mattered was the ratio.

The A0 being 1m^2 is important too, if you're ordering paper by area?
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