Why is a trillion U.S. not the same number as a trillion in other countries?

Question

In the United States, a trillion is written as
1,000,000,000,000 - (twelve zeros)

whereas in most other countries, this number refers to a billion.
In those countries, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 which is to us, a quintillion.

Can anyone explain why this is so?

http://www.jimloy.com/math/billion.htm

The scientific community uses the American system.

Answer 1

Maybe in non-mathematical areas...

But in math, a trillion is a trillion... "US version"

I have a couple degrees in math, and I've never heard of this.

A million is 1000 thousands
A billion is 1000 millions
A trillion is 1000 billions.

If somebody wants to call it something else, they had better not be talking to a mathematician.... at least if he wants to be understood.

Apparently Jim Loy is only able to count zeros, and hasn't figured out convention yet. Don't let it worry you. Stick with his so-called, "US" system, and you'll be ok.

Edit: According to one poster, the countries that use it aren't committed to it. Perhaps there is a logical reason for it based on some grammatical naming convention. But as that poster also pointed out, when dealing with large numbers, people who want others to know what they're talking about use scientific notation. And in higher mathematics, numbers don't get "bigger," they get "fewer."

Answer 2

According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, the words billion and trillion were originally derived from the "bymillion" and "trimillion", which indeed referred to 10^12 and 10^18 respectively. In other words, the words started on the long scale. Apparently at some point, someone took the word billion as referring to the next digit grouping of digits after 10^6, which is 10^9, and the meaning of the words billion and trillion shifted to 10^9 and 10^12 in some countries, but not in others. Since then there has been much waffling back and forth in Europe on which usage is preferable.

Actually, it's wrong of Jim Loy to say that the scientific community uses the short scale. The scientific community uses SI prefixes and scientific notation, thus enabling them to avoid any and all ambiguity as to what is meant. If, however, we must ascribe a position to the scientific community as to which scale is preferred, my guess would be that they would vote in favor of the long scale. This is based both on the fact that universal adoption of the long scale has been proposed in the past (during the 9th General Conference on Weights and Measures -- the proposal was not adopted), and on the fact that the SI system is (as the official name "le Système international d'unités" would suggest) controlled by France, which is a long scale country. I suspect that Jim Loy's assertion that the scientific community favors the short scale is biased somewhat by the fact that he only reads scientific articles written in English, and English-speaking countries do tend to heavily favor the short scale.

Answer 3

they are different because of the money value. In addition, the Foreign exchange market comes to account. For example, the dollar is worth less then a euro.