[Wikipedia-l] I'll see your milliard, and raise you a thousand million...

Wed Oct 6 17:39:21 UTC 2004

On 6 Oct 2004, at 16:03, Rowan Collins wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 12:23:14 +0200, Jens Ropers 
> <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
>> IMO the "milliard" convention is absolute rubbish, because it
>> effectively breaks the decimal system

>  I completely disagree. There's nothing "decimal" about
> million->billion->trillion going up in factors of a thousand rather
> than of a million, it's completely arbitrary.

My beef with the "milliard"-convention (and why I think it "breaks" the 
decimal system) is not its number of zeros. If the 
"milliard"-convention were only to use:

(NB: use a non-proportional font here)

milliard			 10^9					  1,000,000,000
billiard			10^15			 1,000,000,000,000,000
trilliard			10^21	1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
etc.

then hey, that's logical and "kinda decimal".
I wouldn't have a problem with that.

Likewise, if people were only to use:

million			 10^6					      1,000,000
billion			10^12		  	     1,000,000,000,000
trillion			10^18	    1,000,000,000,000,000,000
etc.

then I wouldn't have a problem with that either.

What '''drives me NUTS''' however is the "traditional" usage, whereby 
you have:

million			 10^6					      1,000,000
milliard			 10^9					  1,000,000,000
billion			10^12		  	     1,000,000,000,000
billiard			10^15			 1,000,000,000,000,000
trillion			10^18	    1,000,000,000,000,000,000
trilliard			10^21	1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
etc.

-- this effectively uses a "duodecimal" system as it were. 

((In [[List_of_numbers#English_names_for_powers_of_10]], this latter 
system is described as the "Continental European" convention, with the 
"Traditional British" usage being a much more sane alternative (cf. 
above).))

Sadly, the said "traditional" (I mean "Continental European") usage is 
what's in use in in the country I'm now again (temporarily) living in 
-- Germany. IMHO no sane person could actually settle on such a system. 
Well, at least in Germany that system is ''unanimously'' used, so thank 
heaven for small favours!

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com