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How big is a billion? - Numberphile

Numberphile1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2014–2024
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Numberphile explains the long and short scales for naming large numbers, covering millions, billions, trillions, milliards and the Greek myriad, with James Grime and Tony Padilla.

HN links it whenever a thread hits the ambiguity of whether a billion is 10^9 or 10^12.

7 comments from Hacker News

@Toucan2014-02 · in “Has goto fail been fixed yet?”

I don't think that's right. 10^6 is a million in both languages. 10^9 used to be a milliard in British English but is no longer used. It is now referred to as a billion. 10^12 used to be a billion in British English but is now referred to as a trillion. Edit: ▶ this video explains it all quite nicely.

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@throw0101d2024-12 · in “Fun facts about SQLite”

> Since SQLite is used extensively in every smartphone, and there are more than 4.0 billion (4.0e9) smartphones in active use, each holding hundreds of SQLite database files, it is seems likely that there are over one trillion (1e12) SQLite databases in active use. I find the scientific notation of the counts amusing given the sometimes different meanings of "billion" and "trillion" (especially with English as a second language): * link * ▶ this video * link (bonus: on French numbers)

@throw0101c2022-09 · in “OptiFi Program Incident Report”

MM is for mille-mille (French?), thousand-thousand, so 1000-1000 or 1-000-000. See "How big is a billion?" from Numberphile : * ▶ this video * link

@throw0101a2022-08 · in “Italy, Intel close to $5B deal for chip factory”

See "How big is a billion?" by Numberphile : * ▶ this video * link (Given a choice, I would go with the long system, but sadly that doesn't seem to be the timeline we live in.)

@throw0101a2022-04 · in “As the scale of science expands, so does the language of prefixes”

See also the video "How big is a billion?" by the Numberphile channel: > We discuss millions, billions, trillions and centillions is this film about the long and short scales. We also touch on quadrillions, sextillions, milliards, billiards and the Greek myriad. * ▶ this video Does a "billion" have 9 zeros or 12 zeros? * link * link