3 ms·

That's only accepted (and understood) in finance. Here: better to just spell out "3 million", I reckon.

by tpmx 6y ago

lotsofpulp 6y ago
k = thousands, m = millions, b = billions, t = trillions, a = quadrillions Is more universally understood I think. Also, seems like more work to write out 4MMM rather than 4b.
- tpmx 6y ago
  Well, no. That's not the system we pretty much all use in software development. We use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-prefixes https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-pref...
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I’m talking about common parlance, that would make sense to people across all disciplines, finance, software, or otherwise. If you wrote $10B, people will know it’s billion just because you’re talking about currency. If you write $10G, people will not since very few people will connect G to billion. I also meant q for quadrillions, not a.
- zenexer 6y ago
  Where are you getting these prefixes? It’s M, not m. 3M = 3,000,000. 3MM means the same thing, but it’s usually only seen in finance, and it’s not an SI prefix. 4MMM is meaningless. m (lowercase) means “milli-,” which certainly isn’t what you want.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    m lowercase also means meters, but in the context of a discussion of dollars I figured it’s obvious what m would mean, lower or upper case.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Where are you getting these prefixes? There is a somewhat dated system of abbreviations that used be (and occasionally still is) used in finance-related matters inspired by the use of M in Roman numerals where M or m is thousands and MM or mm is millions; different sources disagree on whether MMM/mmm can also be used for billions in that system. Recently, it's been displaced by a probably-SI-inspired (but not SI-correct, particularly as regards capitalization which remains optional) system of K/k and M/m thousands and millions (but billions are usually not G/g, I've seen B/b more frequently, with T/t for trillions.)

That's only accepted (and understood) in finance. Here: better to just spell out "3 million", I reckon.

by tpmx 6y ago

That's only accepted (and understood) in finance. Here: better to just spell out "3 million", I reckon.

k = thousands, m = millions, b = billions, t = trillions, a = quadrillions Is more universally understood I think. Also, seems like more work to write out 4MMM rather than 4b.

tpmx 6y ago
Well, no. That's not the system we pretty much all use in software development. We use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-prefixes https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-pref...
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I’m talking about common parlance, that would make sense to people across all disciplines, finance, software, or otherwise. If you wrote $10B, people will know it’s billion just because you’re talking about currency. If you write $10G, people will not since very few people will connect G to billion. I also meant q for quadrillions, not a.
zenexer 6y ago
Where are you getting these prefixes? It’s M, not m. 3M = 3,000,000. 3MM means the same thing, but it’s usually only seen in finance, and it’s not an SI prefix. 4MMM is meaningless. m (lowercase) means “milli-,” which certainly isn’t what you want.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  m lowercase also means meters, but in the context of a discussion of dollars I figured it’s obvious what m would mean, lower or upper case.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Where are you getting these prefixes? There is a somewhat dated system of abbreviations that used be (and occasionally still is) used in finance-related matters inspired by the use of M in Roman numerals where M or m is thousands and MM or mm is millions; different sources disagree on whether MMM/mmm can also be used for billions in that system. Recently, it's been displaced by a probably-SI-inspired (but not SI-correct, particularly as regards capitalization which remains optional) system of K/k and M/m thousands and millions (but billions are usually not G/g, I've seen B/b more frequently, with T/t for trillions.)