5 ms·
Why do they say 179,000 million instead of 179 billion? Is that common in their industry?
by belinder 2y ago
Why do they say 179,000 million instead of 179 billion? Is that common in their industry?
- infecto 2y agoPretty common in finance across the board to use consistent units and to not use decimals. So in this case the following sentences mention $10 million, you would not want to say $0.10 billion. It depends on whats being presented of course but in large numbers like these, decimals make it harder to read.
- zie 2y agoThis! Also because people regularly screw up units(forgetting to convert, etc), so if you keep them all the same, it's a touch harder to screw up.
- llm_trw 2y agoWhy do we say 17,000 kilometers instead of 17 megameters?
- mort96 2y agoI want us to start using megameters. And gigameters. And instead of (metric) tons, I want megagrams. No kilotons; gigagrams.
- llm_trw 2y agoBe the change you want to see. I remember the first time I got those units out of gnu units on the command line scratching my head wondering why I'd never used them before and why it was using them at the same time.
- zmgsabst 2y agoI’m personally partial to attolightyears (about 1cm).
- Chris2048 2y agoSurely you'd use the base unit of time, the second (lightseconds)? atto-lightyear = 1e-18 lightyear lightyear = 3.156e+7 lightsecond Hence, atto-lightyear = 3.156e-11 lightsecond = 31.56 pico-lightsecond
- walthamstow 2y agoBrewers introduced me to this with hectolitres
- darkwater 2y agoHectolitres and hectograms are used fairly often (the latter, daily) in Italian, for example.
- walthamstow 2y agoHectolitre is 100 litres, not 100ml, but hectogram is 100g, not 100kg? Very confusing!
- mort96 2y agoI mean Hecto = 100 Hectoliter = 100 litres Hectogram = 100 grams Kilo = 1000 Kiloliter = 1000 litres Kilogram = 1000 grams It doesn't look that confusing?
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- jagger27 2y agoWell yeah, litres and grams are the base units. Just because 1ml is 1g of water doesn't change how SI prefixes work.
- walthamstow 2y agoI would have thought if gram is the base unit for weight then millilitre is the base for volume, but I must be wrong
- lambdaxyzw 2y agoThat's actually a good question. Why? We have nanometets, picometers, centimeters, decimeters, kilometers, why not megameters?
- ragebol 2y agoI wonder why too. Same for weights: why have a ton (1000/kilo kilograms) if you can have a megagram (which is the weight of 1 cubic meter of water at the right conditions) The only 'commonly' used unit of measure larger than a kilometer is a light year, at least that I can think of. Maybe a Astronomical Unit, but not 'common' I suppose.
- datadrivenangel 2y agoThe mile is larger than a kilometer. But it shouldn't be common.
- calgoo 2y agoIn Sweden, a mile is 10km, not 1.6… so there are other measures that exist, just not in all countries.
- jagger27 2y agoI think in terms of things commonly measured on Earth we don't benefit much from the jump to megametres. The diameter of this planet is 12,742 km. Does it help much to say 12.7 megametres? Not really. Off planet the distances between objects are far beyond megametres. AU, parsec, and lightyears make much more sense.
- dorfsmay 2y agoMost people prefer habits/conventions over logic. I've had people get angry when I tried to use Mm (mega metre) or ask why using some currencies symbols before the number when all symbols for all other units are used after.
- queuebert 2y agoScientists don't use either. If using SI units, they would say 1.7 x 10^7 m, or 1.7e7 in code, which is even shorter.
- mattkrause 2y agoIn practice, people tend to use units that match the “natural scale” of the data. If the data consists of electrical potentials between 0.0000001 and 0.0002 V, it’s way easier to think about it as microvolts, especially if any other is in a complementary scale.
- queuebert 2y agoEspecially in conversation, but calculations are typically done in SI units to avoid mistakes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foe_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foe_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit)
- Chris2048 2y agoperhaps we should use kilo-millions?
- John23832 2y agoFT does finance speak. Tranches are in millions more regularly than billions.
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- flipbrad 2y agoBillion has wildly different meanings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion
- lambdaxyzw 2y agoI disagree, as a native speaker of a language where "bilion" means 10^12, it's clear to me that "billion" means 10^9 when used in English text. So I disagree that is ambiguous. But maybe that's wiem that way to make sure foreigners with poor understanding of English don't read it incorrectly, because I guess it gets confusing (even journalists sometimes make a mistake of translating that wrong).
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago"Billion" meant 10^12 in England until... some time in the 1950s, I think? But 10^9 in the USA. So there was confusion, even in the English-speaking world. Was. If I understand correctly, England has adopted 10^9, and so now there is no ambiguity.
- justin66 2y agoWho knew? But that article indicates America has used the short scale (base ten) forever and the UK has used it since 1974, so let's just assume that FT (an English language paper) is not worried about confusion regarding the meaning of 'billion' and there's a different norm at work here.
- Barrin92 2y ago>let's just assume that FT (an English language paper) is not worried about confusion The FT has a big international audience. As a German reader where a "Billion" is still 10^12 it does sometimes trip me up a little. So I at least find it useful.
- justin66 2y agoThat's a decent point, but what I don't get is, when I do a Google Translate from English to German for "billion," I get "Milliarde." Is the concern that German readers, reading the article in translation to German, will be confused? It would seem like the German readers reading the English article would understand. Not trying to argue any point (I mean honestly...), just trying to understand the German POV here, which is interesting.
- spatulon 2y agoUntil a few decades ago, the term 'billion' actually meant one million million (1e12) in the UK, rather than the now commonly-accepted meaning of one thousand million (1e9). As a British paper, the FT may simply be trying to avoid the ambiguity.
- kqr 2y agoBecause 179,000 million is a 179 milliard, not 179 billion, which would be 179,000 milliard!