Billion,trillion,quadrillion,quintillion-----decillion.Why is our way different from everywhere else?

Question

In Canada and the U.S, a billion has 9 zeros but everywhere else it has 12 zeros. A trillion 12 here and there 18.A decillion 33 here and there 60 zeros.In Europe the word milliard is used and it has 9 zeros.??????

Answer 1

The french also use our system. The germans and english use the other.

Logically, the other way makes a little bit more sense. But giving each group of three its own name has proven more practical. There are no british billionaires, based on their counting system. The opportunities for employing named numbers is significantly increased by reducing the size.

To reduce ambiguity, Carl Sagan (and numerous others) used to refer to so many "million millions" or "million million millions." Brian (above) makes a good point. Above a million you're probably better off switching to scientific notation anyway. Engineering notation (where the exponent is divisible by 3) is slightly more convenient yet.

Answer 2

You are talking about the difference between the short and long scales. The short scale uses the idea that every number can be written as X * thousand * thousand^Y, and the exponent Y determines the name. -1 will nullify the first thousand making the X the entire number. 0 will make it just thousand. 1 means million, 2 is billion, 3 is trillion etc.

The long scale says every number can be written as X * million^Y, and Y determines the prefix, ie 1 is million, 2 is billion etc. 1.5 becomes a thousand million, or in some cases, milliard, where 2.5 would be a thousand billion, or billiard.

Answer 3

In Australia, a billion is 10^9, or ten with nine zeros. The only place that wasn't the case was Europe, where they seem to have used the strange logic that, if a million was 1000 thosands, then a billion must be 1000000 millions.

I'm pretty sure they use the same system now. The numbers are arbitrary anyway. I mean, why should we give names to numbers multiplied by factors of 1000?

Answer 4

"Milliard" is representative of old English and French counting methods that aren't used much any more.

Nowadays, basically everyone uses the same standards: million = thousand thousand. Billion = thousand thousand thousand. You are correct in saying that historically (though not much anymore), a billion was a million million - what we'd call a trillion today.

However, to prevent confusion, you should still use scientific notation, which is standard everywhere.