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Depends what country you're from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales Personally I'm in the
by axod 17y ago
Depends what country you're from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Personally I'm in the Long scale camp. It makes far more sense. That's why I was confused to not see the 'correct' answer listed :)
For example in the Short scale, their logic is: billion=
1,000 ^ (1 + 2). So for example TRIllion, the tri is pretty unintuitive. It has 3+(3 * TRI) zeros.
In the Long scale, the logic is trillion=1,000,000^TRI or 6 * TRI zeros.
I had no idea the UK had 'officially' abandoned the Long scale in 1970s, while the rest of Europe still officially uses it. I'm sure I was taught Long scale. Shame.
- alex_c 17y agoI always thought of it as a language-specific thing, with English speaking countries using short scale, and other European countries using long scale (I always thought that the French "billion" being equivalent to the English "trillion" was basically just an issue of translation). I never realized it's quite that complicated and inconsistent.
- jmathes 17y agoIn the long scale, it's like this: 10^3 = thousand 10^6 = million 10^9 = milliard 10^12 = billion 10^15 = billiard 10^18 = trillion So there are 10^18/10^6 = 10^12 millions in a trillion. In the long scale, they'd call that a billion. So the two correct answers are "there are a million millions in a trillion" and "there are a billion millions in a trillion"