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On a similar note, English outside the United States used the long-scale billion (10^12, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wiki

by hugh4 11y ago

On a similar note, English outside the United States used the long-scale billion (10^12, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales) until the last few decades. When numbers on the order of 10^9 started to become a thing that needed to be discussed regularly, everybody grudgingly switched to the American short-scale "billion" on the grounds of it actually being useful.

seszett 11y ago
How is it more useful though? It's just different words for the same numbers, and it seems to me like long scale would actually be more useful because it allows representing larger numbers.
- bane 11y ago
  You can represent any number in either scale, the short scale simply aligns the names with the comma/dot representation. The short scale offers more precision and is easier to say when dealing with common "large" numbers like GDP, or shipping volume or whatnot. Instead of saying "the trade imbalance this quarter was $58 billion" you'd say "the trade imbalance this quarter was $58 thousand million". Or "The total revenue this quarter was $23 billion, 118 million, 326 thousand, 112" or "$23 thousand million, 118 million, 326 thousand, 112". The later is harder to say, maps poorly between representational spacers (commas/dots depending), and is easy to confuse. Keep in mind, before the 20th century, there wasn't much of a case where anybody would have to deal with figures this large, these days literally everybody does. Getting rid of two syllables and aligning the spoken form with the representational form greatly simplifies day-to-day speech.
  - Someone 11y ago
    That's why the long scale has milliard, billiard, trilliard, etc. The long scale is slightly more logical with its (Latin number)illion = 10^(6 times Latin number) (whatever)illiard = 1000 times (whatever)illion , compared to the short scale's (Latin number)illion = 10^(3 times Latin number plus 3) that somehow maps even Latin numbers to odd exponents and vice versa. If one could design this from a clean sheet, I think a short form where billion = 10^6, trillion = 10^9 would make the most sense, as it logically names numbers that one might encounter. Scientists who need huge numbers will use scientific notation or phrases such as gigadollars.
  - seszett 11y ago
    As the sibling comment says, I think you somehow missed the -iard words. Since the words larger than thousand that are used most often (at this time) are million and milliard/billion, I like the way milliard is very different from million and at the same time, in French, follows a kind of natural progression from mille, million, milliard.
- hugh4 11y ago
  Because the newspaper regularly needs to discuss numbers on the order of billions, and it's nice to save a couple of syllables over "thousand million" every time. The newspaper only occasionally discusses 10^12s (mostly in the context of how much debt the US is in, go figure) and "trillion" is fine for that. (The long scale trillion is 10^18, a useless sort of number.) Larger numbers rarely need to be discussed outside contexts where you'd use scientific notation anyway.

by hugh4 11y ago

seszett 11y ago

How is it more useful though? It's just different words for the same numbers, and it seems to me like long scale would actually be more useful because it allows representing larger numbers.

bane 11y ago
You can represent any number in either scale, the short scale simply aligns the names with the comma/dot representation. The short scale offers more precision and is easier to say when dealing with common "large" numbers like GDP, or shipping volume or whatnot. Instead of saying "the trade imbalance this quarter was $58 billion" you'd say "the trade imbalance this quarter was $58 thousand million". Or "The total revenue this quarter was $23 billion, 118 million, 326 thousand, 112" or "$23 thousand million, 118 million, 326 thousand, 112". The later is harder to say, maps poorly between representational spacers (commas/dots depending), and is easy to confuse. Keep in mind, before the 20th century, there wasn't much of a case where anybody would have to deal with figures this large, these days literally everybody does. Getting rid of two syllables and aligning the spoken form with the representational form greatly simplifies day-to-day speech.
- Someone 11y ago
  That's why the long scale has milliard, billiard, trilliard, etc. The long scale is slightly more logical with its (Latin number)illion = 10^(6 times Latin number) (whatever)illiard = 1000 times (whatever)illion , compared to the short scale's (Latin number)illion = 10^(3 times Latin number plus 3) that somehow maps even Latin numbers to odd exponents and vice versa. If one could design this from a clean sheet, I think a short form where billion = 10^6, trillion = 10^9 would make the most sense, as it logically names numbers that one might encounter. Scientists who need huge numbers will use scientific notation or phrases such as gigadollars.
- seszett 11y ago
  As the sibling comment says, I think you somehow missed the -iard words. Since the words larger than thousand that are used most often (at this time) are million and milliard/billion, I like the way milliard is very different from million and at the same time, in French, follows a kind of natural progression from mille, million, milliard.
hugh4 11y ago
Because the newspaper regularly needs to discuss numbers on the order of billions, and it's nice to save a couple of syllables over "thousand million" every time. The newspaper only occasionally discusses 10^12s (mostly in the context of how much debt the US is in, go figure) and "trillion" is fine for that. (The long scale trillion is 10^18, a useless sort of number.) Larger numbers rarely need to be discussed outside contexts where you'd use scientific notation anyway.