5 ms·

Why MM, is it the standard for million akin to "k" is for thousand?

• jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  MM looks like "million million" to me, which is the old standard for billion but nowadays a billion is just a thousand million and a million million is a trillion and I am constantly feeling frustrated about how wasteful we are with words for big numbers. But I think in this context MM is a million.
  • drilldrive 6y ago
    That was my exact thoughts seeing MM too yeah, the Roman M symbol meaning thousand clears it up though. Just a historical oddity.
• AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  "M" is the roman numeral for thousand. It is therefore ambiguous. Especially when dealing with money, you really don't want a million to be confused with a thousand.
• Itsdijital 6y ago
  MM means mil mil or 1000 1000. Its the roman numeral for 1,000,000 and typically used today in finance.
  • sorenjan 6y ago
    MM is 2000 in roman numerals though. It's additive, not multiplicative.
    • aeternum 6y ago
      In finance mm is generally accepted to mean million.
• idoh 6y ago
  "Mille" is French for 1,000. So MM = 1,000 * 1,000. M is also used in advertising, like CPM: Cost Per Mille.