Poll: One Billion

[Anchupom]

...engineer's notation is what I go by. Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera... screw this million-billion nonsense. I'll take a GigaDollar, please!

If forums had a like button...

 

[Aurora219]

Um... no?
1 Billion = 1,000,000,000
1,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000
1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000

So... A better question is, why is UK bad at math?

Yeah, no sorry OP. I'm English. A billion doesn't change by a factor of three zeros between countries. It's a thousand million.

 

[PoliceBox63]

I never realised there was a difference and now that I think about it I was never entirely sure what a billion exactly was in terms of multiplicatives.
(although I remember often thinking it a million X million)

I'm a physicist though so I just work in powers of 10 all the time.

 

[Jack Macaque]

1000 x Million is 1 000 000 000 which is 1 Billion last time I checked lol...

Million x Million is 1 000 000 000 000 which is 1 Trillion last time I also randomly checked the status of numbers...

Or maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Brandon237]

12 zeroes for a billion? that's messed up.
1000 x million is the right way, of course.

It is messed up, my friend and I had an interesting conversation... until we realised we were working with 2 different numbers
And isn't 12 zeros a trillion?

You mean a billion billion? Not if you are english. The Trillion has 18 zeros.

I'm not from England ^^
So for us here, a trillion is = 1 000 000 000 000. If that were not the case then the financial news would make NO sense sometimes.

 

[vamp rocks]

I grew up in the states but spent the last 4 years in the UK and I just always think of a Billion as 1000 x 1 million

 

[Sulgoth]

And we wonder why the world get so confusing, maybe we should get around to being more uniform in this regard, while we're at it maybe we should get the word 'fag' back to its proper roots.

 

[GeorgW]

We have the 1'000'000'000'000 version of billion here in Sweden. 1'000'000'000 is a milliard (roughly translated) and it works the same throughout (1'000'000'000'000'000 is a billiard, yes that one is annoying). That way we have to remember half the names ^^
But as a mathematician, I prefer 10[sup]n[/sup].

 

[dragonslayer32]

I honestly didn't know there was a difference. I'm English and always believed a billion to be 1000 million. Are you sure there is a difference?

 

[Ironic]

I'm pretty sure the standardised version of a billion in both countries is now 1000 x million.

So recently I have learnt that the UK and the US have diffrent defintions of 1 Billion.

In the UK, one billion is one million x million

In the US, one billion is 1000 x Million

I like in England and ive always thought of it as 1000 x M because it made sense to me.
Just wondering whats your view on one billion and did you know there were variations?

um dunno where ur getting this from but my old tai kwon doe instructor was also a banker (i live in uk) and in his bank a billion was 100x 1000 000

100 x 1,000,000 is 100 million.

Also I would like to point out that as finances tend to be a global thing, 1000 million is used as a billion because it is a standard.
Naming numbers doesn't follow a really GREAT logic anyway;
10 x 10 = 100 a hundred
10 x 100 = 1000 a thousand
10 x 1000 = 10,000 ten thousand

That's where the number individuality breaks down, but I guess it makes it a lot easier than having to remember a separate name for each extra 0.

 

[BlueAnubis]

here is how i learned it
One thousand : 1,000
One Million : 1,000,000
One Billion : 1,000,000,000
One Trillion : 1,000,000,000,000
One Quadrillion : 1,000,000,000,000,000
One Quintillion : 1,000,000,000,000,000,000

I don't know if they have named it after that point. Hooray big numbers

 

[d4rkxy13x]

Being in France, un milliard is 1000M, whereas un billion is 1M x 1M

 

[Captain Pancake]

Im british, I always use 1000 million. A million million just seems to unwieldy a number.

 

[GundamSentinel]

short scale:
million = 1000000
billion = 1000000000
trillion = 1000000000000
quadrillion = 1000000000000000
quintillion = 1000000000000000000
sextillion = 1000000000000000000000

long scale:
million = 1000000
milliard = 1000000000
billion = 1000000000000
billiard = 1000000000000000
trillion = 1000000000000000000
trilliard = 1000000000000000000000

Most countries use long scale and personally I prefer it, but only because it has easy words for bigger numbers. There is no other advantage or disadvantage really.

 

[John the Gamer]

I use the European(Yeah) system. Personally I've never used numbers beyond the Trilliard(Sextillion in US/UK system).

Million 1.000.000
milliard 1.000.000.000
Billion 1.000.000.000.000 <--- Name comes from Bi-million
Billiard 1.000.000.000.000.000
Trillion 1.000.000.000.000.000.000 <--- Tri-million
Trilliard 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000
Quadrillion 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 <--- Four-million
etc.
Quingentilliard = 10^3003 = ten with 3003 zero's

That's as far as I go. check it yourselves:

[link]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numbers[/link]
[link]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers[/link]

Edit: Btw, Yay for Wikipedia.

Edit-Edit: This poll made me ask myself: How many blocks are in a minecraft world? 8x the earth = probably alot.

 

[Sethzard]

Um... no?
1 Billion = 1,000,000,000
1,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000
1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000

So... A better question is, why is UK bad at math?

Probably because we don't do math we do maths.

I've always though of it as 1,000,000,000 I didn't know that there was another way. I assume that that's what the government uses too because otherwise our economy is screwed.

 

[Xyliss]

Um... no?
1 Billion = 1,000,000,000
1,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000
1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000

So... A better question is, why is UK bad at math?

So I assume your American. We're not bad at maths, we just have different definitions. Not that either one is more correct (from what I can gather), it just depends who you're talking to. Personally I (begrudgingly) think the American way seems more logical and is used more than the British version

 

[Nouw]

A billion? How petty.

I require [i/]one hundred billion![/i]

I see your one hundred billion and raise you quatrillion!

To be honest I just learnt it as 1,000,000,000.

 

[Gudrests]

Um... no?
1 Billion = 1,000,000,000
1,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000
1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000

So... A better question is, why is UK bad at math?

yepp...thats math right there. I dont know how this can be confusing. Maybe they see 1000 X does not mean multiply

 

[Torrasque]

Um... no?
1 Billion = 1,000,000,000
1,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000
1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000

So... A better question is, why is UK bad at math?

So I assume your American. We're not bad at maths, we just have different definitions. Not that either one is more correct (from what I can gather), it just depends who you're talking to. Personally I (begrudgingly) think the American way seems more logical and is used more than the British version

Swing and a miss.
Personally, I think a billion is 1,000,000,000, which is 1,000 x 1,000,000
No matter how you say it, you can't argue with maths.
I wanna meet the person that coined "a billion is a million millions" and slap them.
It might just be an expression, basically saying "HOLY SHIT A BILLION IS ALOT!", but it is still retarded.

Like saying:
"The UK version is a hundred hundreds is a thousand"
"The US version is ten hundreds is a thousand"
(if you are unclear by this definition, it is the exact same as this thread's original post, it is just reduced)

The difference between those two is simple.
One can be seen as an expression, meaning "wow, that is a lot", or just retarded pseudo-math
The other can be seen as the definition of what that number is.