Billion logic

[aussiemuscle308]

I was listening to the radio about the govt spending a billion dollars on this and that. why is a thousand-million referred to as billion?
since 10x10s is hundred
100x100 is thousand
1000x1000 is a million
why isn't
1,000,000x1,000,000 a billion (1012)
rather than what the media is actually referring to 1,000,000,000 (109)?

[Stark]

Assuming this is a serious question, the answer is 'America'.

However, the words are grouped (pretty obviously) by 3 powers of ten; 10e3, 10e6, 10e9, etc. And lets face it; 'milliard' is a dumb word. :V

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

100x100 is thousand

Your pattern has a flaw

[Stark]

Is there a silly word for ten thousand? 萬 isn't going to cut it in textbooks!

[Dr Roberts]

In America a thousand million IS a billion. In blighty we used to use a million million but we have now adopted the Yankee version.

[Omeganian]

Is there a silly word for ten thousand? 萬 isn't going to cut it in textbooks!

Myriad?

[mr friendly guy]

In America a million million is a trillion. In the UK a million million is a billion. Of course it gets more confusing because the Americans also have a word called billion, which denotes 1000 million.

In sci fi vs terms, its confusing when you try to analyse Doctor Who, because are they using British billion or American billion (which is 1 thousandth time smaller).

[Welf]

Assuming this is a serious question, the answer is 'America'.

However, the words are grouped (pretty obviously) by 3 powers of ten; 10e3, 10e6, 10e9, etc. And lets face it; 'milliard' is a dumb word. :V

No, it's not. "Milliarde" is the best possible word for 1000x1000x1000.

[Eternal_Freedom]

In America a million million is a trillion. In the UK a million million is a billion. Of course it gets more confusing because the Americans also have a word called billion, which denotes 1000 million.

In sci fi vs terms, its confusing when you try to analyse Doctor Who, because are they using British billion or American billion (which is 1 thousandth time smaller).

Everyone seems to have adopted the yankee version. Otherwise theUK government is earning hundreds of times what the States are.

Oh well.

[UnderAGreySky]

It's worse in India. We have groupings of 3, 2, 2 and 2: 1,000 (hazaar/thousand), 1,00,000 (laakh/lakh), 1,00,00,000 (karod/crore), 1,00,00,00,000 (arab). Anything above that is just a combination of the ones before (one lakh crore, one hundred arab...).

At some point I'd really like it to switch to the international system of three-digit spacing for good.

[PainRack]

Is there a silly word for ten thousand? 萬 isn't going to cut it in textbooks!

The funny thing is, i was always told that 萬 became a word so as to prevent fraud in accounting.............

I never did get how that worked to be honest.

[Dr Roberts]

You're not going to fraud less than 10,000 and you don't want to be known as the guy who stole a (silly word here) if your caught, so you steal more, which either puts you off or makes you easier to catch. Duh!

[Lusankya]

Are you thinking of 大写？All the characters for numbers also have a capital form: one for easy day to day writing, and another more complicated form that is difficult to modify. After all, it is easy to turn an 一 into pretty much any other number you want. So in order to fix this, you have your 壹 贰 叁 肆 伍 陆 柒 捌 玖 零 拾 佰 仟 亿 instead of 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 百 千 and 亿. Much harder to turn a 壹 into a 拾 than to turn a 一 into a 十. If you have any Chinese bank notes sitting around, you can see the capitalised form written underneath the number, like so:



It's basically the Chinese equivalent of writing your cheque amount out in full words, rather than just writing it in with numbers (e.g. five hundred and eighty one dollars and forty cents vs $581.40)

The 萬 that Stark wrote, however, is just the traditional character, as opposed to the simplified 万. As far as I am aware, 万 doesn't have its own special capitalisation.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I think the name changes every three zeros. You have the thousands in 10^3, millions begin in 10^6, billions are 10^9, trillions are 10^12, and so on.

What's important to me is that we know exactly how much a Sagan is worth.

[Cykeisme]

As already pointed out, naming them by every 3 powers of ten makes sense.. 10^3, 10^6, and 10^9 have names.


Although it's already obvious, I can also explain why, as the OP asks, we have a name for 10^2 :
For values where the power of 10 is not a multiple of 3, all we need to fill in the gaps in between is with the multiplier words "ten" and "hundred", to respectively add 1 and 2 to the power of ten.

So for example, for 10^8 (that does not have a name on its own, as the power is not a multiple of 3), we just treat it as 10^(2+6).. a hundred million.


Okay now I have a question. I never thought about any of this before, and now that I do, it makes sense. Was it consciously designed this way? And by whom?

[Questor]

I've got another question that's semi-related.

How were roman numerals developed? There doesn't seem to be a spoken equivalent, and it seems odd that you'd use a decimal (or largely decimal) spoken language with a completely non decimal written one.

[jwl]

In America a thousand million IS a billion. In blighty we used to use a million million but we have now adopted the Yankee version.

By that you mean the continental SI version. It hasn't got a lot to do with America.

[Singular Intellect]

1 (one)
10 (ten)
100 (hundred)
(1)(10)(100) thousand
(1)(10)(100) million
(1)(10)(100) billion
(1)(10)(100) trillion

Looks quite logical to me.

[PainRack]

Are you thinking of 大写？All the characters for numbers also have a capital form: one for easy day to day writing, and another more complicated form that is difficult to modify. After all, it is easy to turn an 一 into pretty much any other number you want. So in order to fix this, you have your 壹 贰 叁 肆 伍 陆 柒 捌 玖 零 拾 佰 仟 亿 instead of 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 百 千 and 亿. Much harder to turn a 壹 into a 拾 than to turn a 一 into a 十. If you have any Chinese bank notes sitting around, you can see the capitalised form written underneath the number, like so:



It's basically the Chinese equivalent of writing your cheque amount out in full words, rather than just writing it in with numbers (e.g. five hundred and eighty one dollars and forty cents vs $581.40)

The 萬 that Stark wrote, however, is just the traditional character, as opposed to the simplified 万. As far as I am aware, 万 doesn't have its own special capitalisation.

Ah.... Never knew that. I always thought 伍, 陆 and etc were just alternate, ancient forms of spelling.

[Omeganian]

Russia used to have two different number scales. One went up to 10^8, the other to 10^49. Both used the same number names.

[Hamstray]

No, it's not. "Milliarde" is the best possible word for 1000x1000x1000.

Confusion starts to arise once it gets to Billiards

[Spoonist]

Everyone should switch to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix
its sooooooo much better with a global standard than localized idiosyncracies.

Plus nowadays even Joe Average have heard Mega and Giga in everyday use.

I used it daily in work when the need arises to be specific with uncivilized anglosphere people....

[xthetenth]

I believe that corruption should be measured in Billiards. After all, what better way to talk about how much gets pocketed.

As long as it's consistent, whatever works, but the SI prefixes are nice and unambiguous and don't overlap with other systems.

[Irbis]

No, it's not. "Milliarde" is the best possible word for 1000x1000x1000.

Confusion starts to arise once it gets to Billiards

Why? It's trivially easy:

Million < Milliard < Billion < Billiard <Trillion < Trilliard.

Just knowing two very intuitive prefixes, bi- and tri-, let's you cover numbers up to 10^21, larger than 99.99% of cases would require. Ask normal person about comparable quintillions and septillions, however, and in most cases all you get is blank stare. But even short scale is better than Indian system, which is unintuitive, cumbersome, and needlessly (seriously, just look at commas in this number - 1,000,00,00,000) complicated, IMHO.

[MTC]

Long scale: 10⁶ⁿ or 1000000ⁿ (1 million to the power of n)
Short scale: 10³ⁿ⁺³ or 1000⁽ⁿ⁺¹⁾ (1 thousand to the power of n+1)
Where n relates to the numerical prefix; for billion, n = 2; for trillion, n = 3, etc.

The long scale is simple and clear, the short scale is unnecessarily complicated.