scientific notation

I don't think I've seen it called 'ordinary' notation but I think you are asking what is the difference between scientific notation and otherwise, or how you ordinarily think of numbers.

1.6*10^6 is scientific notation for the number 1600000
1.55*10^-2 is scientific notation for 0.0155

All the 10^n (ten to the power of n) just makes calculations with really big or little numbers more manageable.

ruth:

what is ordinary notation

Thanks Jazz, that was a good explanation of scientific notation

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Hi Ruth,
Ordinary notation is just ordiary decimals and whole numbers
eg
5, 2000, 0.0034186, 0.3repeater, etc