It was a bit difficult to understand Guardian articles when large numbers are used if you do not know which billion is referenced. The US billion has become universally used in English-speaking countries. In , British government statistics adopted the US billion. The UK press conforms. The French have shifted about between meanings but finally confirmed the "French" billion in Most non-English speaking nations follow the French with the notable exceptions of Russia and Brazil.
Because the public rarely have any experience with such large numbers, the use of the French billion persists in Britain, especially among the elderly and the classical. In contrast, a US Senator, Everett Dirkson, reportedly once remarked, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money". George Bush was allegedly informed during the Iraq war that three Brazilian soldiers had been killed. Remind me again - just how many is a Brazilian? It is indeed the term that was lost in the UK when we took over the US system.
If I'm right, the adoption of the US billion's been a bit longer coming than anyone here seems to recognise.
It is still widely used today. When I first picked up the English language, I was often confused. One billion 1,,, is equivalent to 10 Chinese billion. They don't really ever use billion Raphael, Provence, France The wholesale adoption of everything American is depressing, I lament the loss of adverbs, pronunciation of two-thousand-and-eight. Billion comes from Bi-Million, the second power of a million.
Using the 3rd power of one-thousand is meaningless. I must be a dinosaur that were taught to speak good eh? Andrew Frazer, Cheltenham England A billion in mathematics is one million to the power 2, or one million times one million. Bi meaning 2, as in bicycle, bi-plane or even base-2 number binary numerical system etc.. A trillion is one million to the power 3, tricycle, triangle, triang - hornby trainset? Anyhow, it makes 'sense', which is something Americans lack so let's not follow them more than we need to.
Jemmy Hanson, Ashton-In-Makerfield, England I think, in the interest of good sense and logic, that we should return to the old British billion or one million to the power of two. The Americans can follow our lead for a change! Tim Holloway, Ludlow When I was studying my accountancy, a British woman I worked with told how me England regarded the number 1,,,, as one billion. To the best of her knowledge, she believed the Americans changed this number "billion" to 1,,, so individual Americans could attain "Billionaire Status.
I did a calculation, converting Pounds Sterling to seconds. That many seconds goes back to bc! That was the year that Seth was born and he was Noah's eldest son.
Michael Smart, Scunthorpe I am surprised that the French invented the "incorrect" billion, given that they had "milliard" in their language. Well done the Swedes for sticking to commonsense. Ivan Martin, Northern Ireland The British Billion was 1,,,, until circa when American astronomers decided to de-value it to ,,, as they said it was easier to calculate light years. Then someone adopted 1,,, as the new billion. This is all nonsense, what about all the books that have been written using the original British billion?
Who is going to understand them? It seems to me that if a name has been allotted to a collection of numbers, then that is how it should stand. Why should we follow the Americans: They don't speak English anyway, or do the same Maths! Peter Thomas, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, UK 1,,, should now be the universal standard used by all countries that use the iso metric system as this is all correctly based on units of 10 to the power of 3.
I have adopted the German number scheme and I must confess I like it. It just seems more standardized. And on that note: I wish the US would finally accept the SI system and just remove itself from the list of only three nations not using the international standard. It is just ridiculous. The only thing that I am not so fond of here is using a decimal point for the thousands marker and a comma for the decimal marker.
A bit confusing there These charts depict the degree of difference from one thousand to one million, one million to billion, one billion to trillion, and so on. One million is one thousand thousand. If you stacked one million pennies on top of each other, the tower would be about a mile high. One billion is one thousand millions. If you stacked one billion pennies on top of each other, the tower would be about miles high. One trillion is one thousand billions. If you stacked one trillion pennies on top of each other, the tower would be about , miles high … which means it would reach to the moon and back and back to the moon again.
Want to brush up on any of your math topics ahead of the ACT? Check out our individual math guides to get the walk-through on each and every topic on the ACT Math test. Running out of time on the ACT Math section? Share this comparison:. If you read this far, you should follow us:. Diffen LLC, n. Magnitude of the difference The magnitude of difference between billion and million can be illustrated with this example of the time scale: A million seconds is 12 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years. First, we had to work out roughly how much space there is in the back of a white van. We think that this is slightly less than twelve cubic metres. Then, we measured a few wotsits, and decided that they were roughly four cm long, and roughly one a half centimetres in diameter, so we could work out how much space each one took up. Doing this we realised that most wotsits aren't straight, but usually curved, and so wouldn't pack together very well.
We guessed that a wotsit needed about half its own size again when packed together, to allow for the spaces. Dividing the space inside the van by the space needed for one wotsit told us how many wotsits we could get in a van slightly less than 1.
We have seen other sites trying to visualise large numbers using rice rather than wotsits.
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