OK I drafted up a large post ages ago about this, but it was deleted. Since this is my thousandth post I want to redo it.
OK the universe is about 13 billion years old.
A Billion = million x million
or douse it? it should logically
every time we square a number we need to invent a new name so
10^2 Ten
=100 Hundred
100^2
=1000 Thousand
1000^2
=1000000 Million
1000000^2
=1000000000000 billion <<<<<<<<<<< so the universe is 13000000000000 years old I've believed that my whole life until I recently discovered a shocking truth 1 billion = a thousand million so the universe is only 1300000000000 years old. Or is it? I dunno, but why did the Americans make a billion only a thousand million. Is it so they could be billionaires. Is a trillion 100000000000000000000000 (10^24 normal billion^2 [billion^2) or is it a million billion. or is it a thousand million^2 or what? :-? Help Me!!

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That's the old British convention.
Hold it right there. 100 squared is not one thousand.
Makes you feel younger, right?

Not sure I can really help, but the Americans have definitely won the definition of a Billion as 10^9, even the Bank of England uses that definition.

The (old) British definition of 10^9 was called a "milliard".

I think a trillion is 10^12.

[quote="A Thousand Pardons"]That's the old British convention.
opps ops:

I think we should change back it makes so much more sence

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As you seem to know, reference.dictionary.com:

1. The cardinal number equal to 10^9.
2. Chiefly British. The cardinal number equal to 10^12.


Whoa. 100^2 is what? Are you Chinese? That culture gives it a name, wan. Me, I call it ten thousand. My culture has a vestigal name for it, though, myriad. How does that fit in your squaring "system"?

In some cultures. Perhaps yours, Australia, ins't it? In others, in cultures where those Universe ages came from, new names come every power of a thousand (and 100 is a special case).

Is it:
13000000000000 or
1300000000000?

Neither. That 13 billion is 13000000000. 13 times 1000 times 1000 times 1000.

For the culture that produced those numbers, think powers of 1000 -- not squares of the last named number.

1000^1 Thousand
1000^2 Million
1000^3 Billion
1000^4 Trillion
1000^5 Quadrillion

For that older English-speaking culture, and some derivatives, think powers of a million -- not squares of the last named number.

1000000^1 Million
1000000^2 Billion
1000000^3 Trillion
1000000^4 Quadrillion

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0....

Explain how.
I could go on a rant about how it makes so much more sense for us to cluck like chickens than to speak English, if I wanted too. You know, so long as I don't try to explain my logic.

Here's something to ease your soul, though. The univese is ~13 gigayears old. Now, you just have to figure out if that's "gigga-" or "jigga-"

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I've always been able to follow the logic behind powers and logarithms...What's often confused me is the apparent arbitrariness of some of the definitions: the American billion: 10^9 against the British billion, 10^12 make good examples IMO. I wonder how many others around the world have been similarly confused. Like Mickal, for a long time thought a billion was 10^12!! ops: ops: ops:

Only in the economy of words needed for all numbers up to some point. The old British system made some numbers rather a mouthfull. It's also easier to figure out how to say a number in the American system. Although I was brought up using the British system (and imperial units) I am glad that we now use the American one (and the French metric system).

I used to HATE when I would read an article saying something would take a billion years or have a billion stars, or something. "That's not right, it should be about a trillion..." Then I would notice the author was British.

So the special column names we have are

10 ten (10^1 )
100 hundred (10^2 )
1,000 thousand (10^3 )
1,000,000 million (10^6 )
1,000,000,000 billion (10^9 )
1,000,000,000,000 trillion (10^12 )

if we follow this pattern we should only have new names for

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^24 )
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^36 )
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 (10^48 )
10^96
10^144
10^192
.
.
.

Is that true?

The British system makes (or made) it obvious what things like heptillions are:

hept = 7; illion = powers of one million
heptillion = million^7 = 10^42

You tell me that quickly what the American version is :P .

I think that a British -illiard was an -illion times 1000. So 1 milliard = 1,000,000,000 = 1 American billion.

We should all just switch to SI prefixes
1000 = kilo
10^3 = mega
10^6 = giga
10^9 = tera
Then we can talk about megabucks and gigabucks

That'd be heptillion = thousand^(7+1) = 10^24, Weird Dave

or, another approach, it is multiplying 1000^n times a thousand.

The meaning of billion.

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While we're talking megs and gigs, what should I say for terabytes? Teras doens't sound so cool as megs or gigs, nor does ters, ... tigs?

Tebs? Still doesn't sound as cool though :P

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"terabytes"

now, that's cool

Here's a table with the names in American usage and the (old?) British version. I remember the conventions up through quintillion, but I get a little fuzzy after that. Of course, at that point it makes more sense to use exponential notation anyway. But now I have the urge to find a way to use the word "quattuordecillion" in conversation ...

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LargeNumber.html

So how come 10^15 isn't a billiard in the British system?