Why is two plus two four

At first glance those numbers appear to be the same, but in reality they are very different. The trailing zero after the decimal point is considered significant for a reason and impacts rounding conventions. If your limit is expressed numerically as 2, you would be in compliance with any measurement less than 2.

If instead your limit was expressed as 2. I think that 2 and 2 make 4 is right as the verb is used according to the second subject — Ali hassnain. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. StoneyB on hiatus StoneyB on hiatus k 13 13 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. A bit of googling shows that it is at least somewhat ambiguous whether you conjugate the singular operation or the collective operands Here's an Ngram : As for why both are used, that's not hard to figure out.

If the subject is singular, the verb makes is used: The baker makes a cake. If the subject is plural, the verb make is used: The bakers make a cake. So, if the subject is two plus two , that could be considered singular or plural, depending on how you parse it: It could be plural, because we are talking about a quantity of four It could be singular, because we are talking about a single math problem with one answer Since either argument is a valid argument, you'll see it get used both ways: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.

George Orwell, Well, I'm not a star in the mathematics department, but I do know that two plus two makes one less than five and one more than three. Two plus two "makes" four. The addition "makes" four.

I will take the contrarian view and point out that many people say Two plus two make four In fact, you will also hear Two and two make four The reason: there are two subjects with a plural verb. The number 2 and the number 2 make 4. As far as I am concerned, there are independent sittings of two subjects of the same nature; however, the word independent speaks about singular, and 3rd person singular subject always follow the "addition of" with its main verb: Two plus two makes four Here the subjects are repeated , not plural and the object '4' is a single number despite being compound.

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You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Thread starter Outsider Start date May 18, Votes: 15 Votes: 6 Either is acceptable. Votes: 8 There is no distinction between "is" and "are" in my language. Votes: 12 Total voters Outsider Senior Member Portuguese Portugal. There was a previous thread about this question in the English forum , but I would like to extend it to other languages. What do you think is the right way to say this equality?

Please answer the poll. I will throw in a few extra questions, as well: 1 Were you taught a particular way to make these sorts of statements in school?

I'm looking forward to your replies. Hi, in Polish it's definitely "is". Thus 20 o C is not twice as hot as 10 o C! Length, height, and weight are ratio scales. Therefore, you can correctly say that "A yard is three times longer than a foot" or "A pound man weighs twice as much as a pound woman.

If you are having some trouble understanding this, it is probably because most of you have only used ratio scales in school. Mathematics courses typically deal only with scales that have true zeros and equal intervals. How does this relate to psychology? Most psychological tests are only ordinal measures! Let's say that three different people score 60, 40 and 20 on a test of extraversion having outgoing personality traits.

Because it is an ordinal scale we can correctly say that 60 is the most extraverted rank 1 , 40 is the second most, and 20 is the third most or least extraverted.