What does “e$00$” mean?

Question

I came upon a $\,-\!\log(p\!-\!\text{value})$ or $\,5.86\text e00$. I know that eXX indicates $10^{XX}$, but how should I interpret e$00$ ? Is it then $5.86\cdot10^0=5.86\cdot1$ ?

Any help interpreting would be very helpful!

Answer 1

I'm going to assume that this is a number in "scientific notation", and that you're using the European convention where a comma, ",", is the decimal separator. (Note: The post has been edited (though not by the OP) to use a period instead of a comma, so that second assumption is kind of moot, but I will leave this answer with a comma, as that's what the OP asked about.)

Maybe you're having trouble in that multiplication signs are usually left out, so we write "$a \times b$" as "$ab$", but that falls apart if we're dealing with actual numbers - you can't write "$2 \times 3$" as "$23$".

A number written in scientific notation as $a\text{E}b$ represents $a\times 10^b$. So your 5,86e00 is just $5,86 \times 10^0 = 5,86 \times 1 = 5,86$. The way you were writing it made it possible that you meant $5,861$, which would be wrong, because of that whole "suppress the implicit times sign" thing.

And to be super-clear, the final value is a number between five and six. As originally written, "$5,861$", it could be interpreted (in some locales) as a number slightly below six thousand.