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Not so bad for a machine, I once met a French Telco guy in charge of buying/selling minutes at a large operator who thought that "billion" meant "two million"
by JPLeRouzic 4y ago
Not so bad for a machine, I once met a French Telco guy in charge of buying/selling minutes at a large operator who thought that "billion" meant "two million"
- paradite 4y agoi remember reading something similar (unit conversion) on HN. Maybe someone can link.
- rypskar 4y agoMaybe because France use the long scale, so a billion is a million millions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale#French-speaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale#French-sp...
- Broken_Hippo 4y agoSame in Norway. I'm from the US and the large numbers always take some thought. I didn't realize that I'd have to relearn counting when moving here, but honestly it is easier than trying to relate the time of day.
- JasonFruit 4y agoThe fact that international confusion over billions doesn't arise more often points out how bad people are at thinking about large numbers. We mostly don't notice the difference between a billion and a trillion.