For example, when we recite the letters A always comes before B and C always comes before D.....Why doesnt B come before A?  And if it is just an abstract order, who and when was this uniform order first determined?
123075
Short answer:  the BASIC order of our letters goes back through Latin, through Greek to Phoenician and the earliest alphabets invented by speakers of "Northwest Semitic" languages (the group that includes Hebrew).   This order (with modifications necessitated by differences in the languages adapting the letters to their own languages) goes back to at least the mid 2nd millennium BC,  but we really don't know why they did it this way.\n\nIn fact, the very NAME "alphabet" betrays these roots!\n\n-----------------\nFuller answer (hang on!):\n\nThe LATIN letters were derived from a form of the GREEK alphabet, and the term "alphabet"  is based on the first two letters of the Greek alphabet --"alpha" and "beta" (so the idea of the word is the same as "a-b-c's").  But these Greek names are rather odd --meaningless, in fact. Why?  That's because the Greeks borrowed a number of the NAMES for their letters from the source of the letters themselves, the seafaring traders of Phoenicia.   The Phoenicians did not invent this system themselves, but were part of a cluster of related "Semitic" languages spoken centered in the regions later called Syria & Palestine.  The letter-names are derived from actual words which BEGAN with the sound that letter is used to represent (e.g., "aleph", meaning "ox").\n\nWe can actually still see much of the original Semitic order of the letters in the Latin alphabet, and even more in the Greek.   The original letters were at times used to represent a different sound from the original letter, esp when the original letter represented a sound unlike any in the language doing the borrowing.   (This is how the Greeks came up with the first set of VOWELS, which were not part of the original Semitic alphabet.)     The major changes/differences in ORDER were caused when the borrowing language dropped a letter it could not use...  and more often by adding letters needed in the borrower's language.  These new letters were most often added at the end, after "T", the final letter in the Semitic alphabets.  Later, after the early Latin alphabet was well-established, some letters"split" into variants, which were listed next to their "parent" letter.   Thus "I" and "J" come from one letter, "U" "V" and "W" were from one letter.\n\nSo when was did the SEMITIC order of the alphabet come about, and why?     Our earliest proven examples of the letters in the basic order used to this day are clay tablets the list the letters in order (perhaps for training scribes?) from the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit (the language, re-discovered in the 1920s is called "Ugaritic").  These show us that this order existed by at least 1300 BC. (with some additional letters for sounds that  were no longer found in later languages like Phoenician, Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic).\n\n(A few centuries later we find reflections of this order in the Bible.   The clearest examples are "acrostic" poetic passages in which  succeeding verses or sets of verses begins with the next letter of the alphabet. Psalm 119 is the most well-known example of this practice, and many English Bibles even mark the successive stanzas as "Aleph" "Beth", etc. ) \n\nBut we still do not know why they adopted THIS order!    Perhaps there is some ancient lost memory device or set of devices (story?  set of sentences?) in which this particular order was found useful for remembering the various letters.   Perhaps certain sounds were thought easy to group together (think of how "l m n" flows for us).      Many believe the inventors of the alphabet were speakers of a Semitic language living in or near Egypt.    So it is possible that the IDEA for an alphabets owed something to a part of the system of Egyptians hieroglyphics.  In that case, perhaps the gr
513529
I see too many combinations to make anything out easily.\nI thought maybe the first might be PR, could also be AXIO...(didn't quite make AXIS POWERS, too bad!)  All those dots in a row have me stumped.  Letters using only dots: e (1 dot), i (2 dots), s (3 dots) and h (4 dots), as well as the number 5 (5 dots).\nAny clues?
125798
well if the men are abc and women are def, then  the arrangement is like adbecf  right?  so   man a is "flanked" by d and f, and man a could also be "flanked" by de or ef so theres 3 different ways man a could sit. for each of these, there are 2 positions the other 2 men could sit in. \n\nso basically its 1 of these:\nadbecf\nadcebf\naebdcf\naecdbf\nafbdce\nafcdbe    \nit doesnt matter which seats they sit on, cuz that will make each man be "flanked" with the same women so u cant have that. all that matters is their order.\nthe answer is c. i hope this makes sense.
71912
I always remember this way:\nBlue = Back (both start with B)\nWhite is neutral = Middle\nRed is agressive = Front
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Again, it's derived from the last 2 letters in these words:  firST, secoND, thiRD, fourTH\n\nThe function stndrdth when used with a number such as a date gives the correct -st -nd -rd -th ending to that number
136154
farrell the first part of your solution is wrong.  There are 10 places to put the vowels, not 8, they can be at the beginning or the end. I believe it is 9! * (10!/5!) = 9! * 10 * 9 * 8 * 7 * 6\n\ntsniperx might be right but the question is ambiguous about this.  It says how many arrangements of the cards (not sequences of letters) are there which to me means that 0'0 and 00' are two different arrangements because the cards are in different order...but like I said it isn't obvious either way.  \n\nIF tsniperx is correct cornelius is still wrong, it would be 9!*10!/(5!*2!*2!*3!)  In other words, cornelius' answer is double the correct answer.  But I still think my original answer is correct.
437428
You have to remember that computers don't see letters, they see numerics that represent letters. They compare values against one another numerically and based on the type of sorting algorithm used (yes there are many of them and different software can use various forms of sorting) can sort the list appropriately.\n\nI am not one for whipping out many wikipedia answers, but wikipedia has a good article that shows you the various sorts that software often uses. Many of them are described in detail and you can get an idea of how they work.\n\nAs for windows I believe it uses a sorting style known as "Natural sorting" which to us isn't exactly straight forward, but to the computer it is perfectly reasonable. I have including a link to a small quick little article about how it works. If you want more info on this part, just do a search for the keywords "natural sorting"\n\nHope this is what you were looking for. Enjoy!
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I am a letter carrier in the post office so this is probably what is happening.The vast majority of letters are sorted by a machine and placed in house to house order by the machine,if the letters are incorrectly sorted by the machine the carrier delivering the mail is supposed to catch it as he looks through the mail as he walks from house to house.Sometimes if there is a lot of mail they don't look pass the number to the street name do to time restrictions.My suggestion to you is to speak to your carrier and explain your concerns then they can make a special effort to look out for any missorted mail of yours.this problem happens all the time and you will get the best results by far if you speak directly to your carrier.
98698
There is none. :) It came after B. (Read more below)
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Sounds like both. Orders, briefs, evidence and/or decisions. You'd have to come up with more context to be certain.\n\nIf it's an advertisement for a database program like Concordance, it might make some sense...
420160
Let us call the first 2 "2 sub 1", the second "2 sub 2" ... same thing for the 6's.\n\nLet us say that "2 sub 1" is distinct from "2 sub 2", and so on.\n\nWe have 8 choices for the first number, seven choices for the second number, etc. This means that there are 8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1 choices, or 8!. \n\nNow if you look at any number, take all of the 2's out. You see that you can rearrange the 2's in 3! different ways (including the original arrangement) using the procedure in the paragraph above. If we take out the 2's rearrange them, and put them back in we have created the a new arrangement. So for each arrangement of numbers, we have counted it 3! times. So we divide by 3!. The same thing for the sixes, we divide by 2!.\n\nThe result it (8!)/((3!)(2!)) = 3360 choices.
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I'm not sure if you mean from the set of {a,b,c,d,e} or all letters:\n\nIf only from the set {a,b,c,d,e}:\n\nIn the first case, you have 5 choices for the first letter, 4 choices for the second letter and 3 choices for the third.  The reason you have less choices is that you have already used a letter or two.\n\nStated as permutations this is:\nP(5,3) = 5 x 4 x 3 = 60 permutations.\n\nFor the second case, this is a simple permutation.  You have 5 choices for the first letter, 5 for the second and 5 for the third.  \n\n5^3 = 5 x 5 x 5 = 125 permutations.\n\nIf you mean for all letters of the alphabet:\n\nIn the first case, you have 26 choices for the first letter, 25 choices for the second letter and 24 choices for the third.\n\nStated as permutations this is:\nP(26,3) = 26 x 25 x 24 = 15,600 permutations.\n\nFor the second case, you have 26 choices for the first letter, 26 for the second and 26 for the third.  \n\n26^3 = 26 x 26 x 26 = 17,576 permutations.
246560
There is no language where word order is totally free.  That is a myth.  There are two strategies for marking the relationship of qualifier-qualified.  The first is word order.  The adjective occurs right next to the noun it modifies (or the adverb next to the adjective/adverb/verb it modifies).  The strategy that is usually adopted in languages with a highly marked declensional system is that the adjective carries a similar or identical declensional ending to the noun it modifies.  In the case of adverbs, word order is still generally the means used.
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They are in alphabetical order.\n\nE,f,f,o,s,s,t,t,z
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As the others say....x horizontal and y vertical. Try to remember the order from the alphabet. It may help you remember.
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Because they(the ones in charge) said it had to be in alphabetical order.
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Independent Order of Odd Fellows