What is a billion? HS2.

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by Mr Badger, Feb 11, 2020.

  1. Mr Badger

    Mr Badger Well-Known Member

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    I'm sure that in my days a billion used to be a million millions, as a million is a thousand thousands.
    Since it is now a thousand millions I wondered if that had always been the case.
    One hundred billion trips off the tongue quickly and easily but I say it long--hand.... one hundred thousand million. When you say it like that it sounds one hell of a lot more money !
     
  2. SuperTyke

    SuperTyke Well-Known Member

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    It changed in the 1970s. Used to be a million million but changed to a thousand million.
     
  3. Ton

    Tonjytyke Well-Known Member

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    It’s 10 DUP votes in support of a tory government, paid for by taxpayer!
     
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  4. Googs

    Googs Well-Known Member

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    You learn summat new everyday! Always been a thousand million to me.
     
  5. andytyke

    andytyke Administrator Staff Member Admin

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    Wasnt one uk and the other USA. Not sure which way round but one changed to match the other
     
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  6. SuperTyke

    SuperTyke Well-Known Member

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    Ours was bigger theirs was smaller. We changed to match them.
     
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  7. Brush

    Brush Well-Known Member

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    And me.
     
  8. Carlycu5tard

    Carlycu5tard Well-Known Member

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    Strange that the United States with their utter determination to stick with imperial and other weird measures like bushels, short tones and weird gallons actually presented something sensible.

    With every n3 having a name - nano, pico, milli, kilo, etc in metric - for the americans to notice we didn't have a sensible differenciating nomenclature for a thousand million seems counter intuitive.

    Maybe the french actually called a thousand million a billion as well and we swapped when we went metric. That would make more sense to me.
     
  9. Stephen Dawson

    Stephen Dawson Well-Known Member

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    I can't see it making any difference to me anytime soon.
     
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  10. Men

    Menai Tyke Well-Known Member

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    1 × 10*9
     
  11. Ses

    Sestren Well-Known Member

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    The French would have called a thousand million a milliard - as would the British before the 1970s, I think.

    Essentially one scale works by changing the prefix every thousand and the other every million. The long one sticks 'iards' in between the 'ions' So you have million, milliard, billion, billiard, trillion etc in the long scale or million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion etc in the short scale. The first was commonly used in Europe, the latter in the USA. Now pretty much everybody uses the second (at least in English).
     
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  12. leebrilleaux

    leebrilleaux Well-Known Member

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    = 90
    Whereas 1 x 10^9 = 1bn ......I think

    10 x 10 = 100 (ten tens = one hundred)
    100 x 100 = 10 000 (one hundred hundreds = ten thousand
    1 000 x 1 000 = 1 000 000 (one thousand thousands = one million)
    1 000 000 x 1 000 = 1 000 000 000 (one thousand millions = one billion)
    1 000 000 x 1 000 000 = 1 000 000 000 000 (one million millions = one trillion - the old fashioned billion)
     
  13. shenk1

    shenk1 Well-Known Member

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    They will probably change the definition again to try and make it look cheaper ;)
     
  14. Men

    Menai Tyke Well-Known Member

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    As you can see I didn’t take writing big numbers in standard form all that seriously!
     
  15. MarioKempes

    MarioKempes Well-Known Member

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  16. MarioKempes

    MarioKempes Well-Known Member

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    The UK government has been using the American meaning of billion since 1974 for the numbers it gives out.
     
  17. leebrilleaux

    leebrilleaux Well-Known Member

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    And this is another reason for Brexit --------- let's take back control...... of the numbers!!!!!
     

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