Numerizer is a gem to help with parsing numbers in natural language from strings (ex forty two). It was extracted from the awesome Chronic gem github.com/mojombo/chronic.
$ gem install numerizer
>> require 'numerizer'
=> true
>> Numerizer.numerize('forty two')
=> "42"
>> Numerizer.numerize('two and a half')
=> "2.5"
>> Numerizer.numerize('three quarters')
=> "3/4"
>> Numerizer.numerize('two and three eighths')
=> "2.375"
Tom Preston-Werner, John Duff