5 ms·
Totally off-topic, but why do some people write 'mm' when they mean (I presume) million? From the subject line I initially thought Duck Duck Go had passed 1 mil
by vilya 15y ago
Totally off-topic, but why do some people write 'mm' when they mean (I presume) million? From the subject line I initially thought Duck Duck Go had passed 1 millimetre of searches per day.
- markyc 15y agohere we go again :) http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=mm++m&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=mm++m&s...
- gk1 15y agoM is the roman numeral for 1,000. So MM is meant as 1,000 x 1,000, which equals 1,000,000 (one million). OP should have used capital letters, as mm does indeed denote millimeters. Better yet, just use the more common M symbol to mean "million."
- ajarmoniuk 15y agoPedantic: MM means 2 tousand if we are really to stick to roman numerals.
- xtacy 15y agoAnother pedantic remark is that people use $1K instead of $1M to mean $1000. I think it's fine to use whatever it takes to get the message across.
- nuttendorfer 15y agoWhich stands for kilo and is correct.
- silon3 15y agoThat's why I always think that $1MM = $1M * 1000000
- icey 15y agoThere isn't a way to write one million in Roman numerals on a standard keyboard (it would be M with a bar over it, or "M" 1,000 times). Instead the shortcut "thousand thousand" (MM) gets used.
- noahc 15y agoPeople from the finance side use MM to mean million, which as you note is really 1,000 X 1,000. The other side you see it is in CPM which is cost per m (being thousand). So people with this background tend to adopt the MM = million because that's how its done.
- rplnt 15y agoI thought it was million*million as I was used to note million as a kk, e.g. 10M=10kk.
- fredwilson 15y agoi was taught to do that back in the early 80s by a couple VCs i worked for at that time. i've done it ever since.
- okamiueru 15y agoYou've probably gotten all your answers based on the other comments. MM or mm should (if at all) only be used within finance. There is enough confusion on units already, that this can't possibly contribute to the better. A few arguments as to why this is such a lousy notation: * m and M already exist in the International System of Units, which is used by pretty much everybody else (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Non-Metric_User.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Non-Metric_User.svg). 'm' is either milli (10^-3) or meters, depending on the context. And M is Mega, or the number in question: one million. * If the reason is to use roman numerals. M, for mille, means 1000. However, MM would mean two thousand, the same way XXII is 22. * "Million" isn't ambiguous, unlike "billion", which either means 10^9 or 10^12.
- vilya 15y agoThanks everyone. My curiosity has been satisified.