6 ms·

You think that’s bad? Half the folks in this 2,500 mile radius are “laughing in their crores and lakhs”. Mildly infuriating for someone not used to arbitrary mu

• fctorial 7y ago
  That's still a 10 based system.
  • thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Well, sort of. It's a sometimes-1000-but-usually-100 based system. That's a significant conflict with the standard English assumption of a 1000-based system (which appears in the metric system as the widespread use of kilounits, megaunits, milliunits...). Chinese uses a 10,000-based ("myriadic") system. Conversion is a gigantic pain. Calling these all "10-based" is more harmful, likely to confuse people, than helpful. You might consider the powers of ten that get their own unit in each system: English: 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, ... Indian: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, ... Chinese: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 16, ...
    • gus_massa 7y ago
      Spanish: 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 18, 24, ... More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales [I had to look up if the official definition of trillion is 10^18 or 10^24. It looks like a nice question to get a good irrelevant discussion for the coffeetime after lunch, if you can collect a few mathematicians in a Spanish speaking country.]
      • narag 7y ago
        Not a Spanish specific thing really.
        • tyfon 7y ago
          Nope, this also applies to the Scandinavian countries at least.
          • Taniwha 7y ago
            It was also true in most of the English speaking world except for the US until relatively recently - some people still talk about "american billions" and "english billions" (the last being 10^12)
    • CydeWeys 7y ago
      They're different, and that is annoying, but it's hard to say exactly which is better or worse than any other. Indian seems to be the most useful, if you don't mind having a couple more words.
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Being 10-based is already a big win (and it isn't harmful to say "10-based" as long as people know what it means). You need to only remember the name <-> power of 10 mapping, and the conversion amounts to adding or removing zeros. Beats having to multiply in your head by arbitrary, hard to remember fractional values.
      • thaumasiotes 7y ago
        Have you ever tried converting from one system to the other in your head? It basically can't be done. Conversion is an easy process if you're willing to use pencil and paper, but at that point you're most of the way to using arbitrary conversion factors.
        • TeMPOraL 7y ago
          I sometimes do between long and short scales (English uses one, Polish uses the other one). So to convert from Polish "bilion" to English, you go "bilion" -> 10^12 -> "trillion". Or, in the rarer case, "sextillion" -> 10^21 = 10^3 * 10^18 -> "tysiąc trylionów". Adding or subtracting the exponent of 10 is much easier than multiplying by random numbers (e.g. 5280 to get from miles to feet).
    • samatman 7y ago
      If you expand your definition of English to include the largest English-speaking population in the world, the existence of the Indian system leads to a nice property: one, ten, hundred, thousand, myriad, lakh, million, crore. We have a unique word for each power of ten up to 10^8. That's pretty neat.
      • thaumasiotes 7y ago
        It should be noted that though "myriad" comes from a Greek word for 10,000, and this is why the term "myriadic" is used to describe a number system based on powers of 10,000, the word itself is common in English with no meaning other than "a lot", and can't be interpreted to mean 10,000.
        • samatman 7y ago
          Sure it can! I just did! Words mean what we want them to mean. If I said there are five myriads of sand grains in an hourglass, what could this possibly mean but 50 thousand?
          • thaumasiotes 7y ago
            ‘I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—’ ‘Certainly,’ said Alice. ‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’ ‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”’ Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’ ‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected. ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ Of course, this is a famous example of an idiot who can't communicate. (Or, indeed, subtract 1 from 365.) Words mean what they mean by common agreement; your wish to use one inappropriately will not make that use appropriate. > If I said there are five myriads of sand grains in an hourglass, what could this possibly mean but 50 thousand? That you're given to poetic turns of phrase? That you're confused about how to refer to numbers in English? If I actually encountered this phrase, I'd lean heavily toward option one there. It would be much like saying the glass contained five times as many grains as the stars in the sky, instead of as many.
  • ak39 7y ago
    It's a 10 based system after the first 1'000. Hardly a "redeeming" feature considering numbers are always read/parsed right to left (Arabic) and given the first three digits separated for the thousands, the mind is already "trained" for the expected regular expression to parse. Booby trapped! 1 crore = 1,00,00,000 (written with accepted formatting). Which is 10'000'000 (formatted) - 10 million - for the rest of the world. Anyone used to the Western formatting will quickly get cockeyed seeing those numbers at a glance. I'd imagine it is just as jarring for the Indians seeing Western formats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system