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Maybe news outlets ought to list numbers in scientific notation a la 1e6 instead of million and 1e12 instead of a trillion. That way you can just add the expone
by mustpax 17y ago
Maybe news outlets ought to list numbers in scientific notation a la 1e6 instead of million and 1e12 instead of a trillion. That way you can just add the exponents without all that pesky multiplication and division.
But we'll need to change the name to something different from "scientific notation." It sounds way too sciency to be palatable. My money is on EZ-Numero.
- ianferrel 17y agoI don't know if that would really help. The problem with numbers above "million" is that people tend to think that a billion is a few million. Changing to a notation where the exponents are just numbers won't help. They know what 12 and 6 are, so E12 is like, twice as big as E6. I think the solution is to go Carl Sagan: start saying "million million" instead of trillion.