Subject:
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OT: "Bouillons and Bouillons" and On-topic: What IS that flipper thing in the MS Kit???
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Wed, 16 Dec 1998 00:54:14 GMT
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Original-From:
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Jeremy Morton (Excell Data Corporation) (Exchange) <a-jeremm@exchange.microsoft.{NoSpam}com>
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Viewed:
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1121 times
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> > Oh, and for the person who asked, a billion was a million
> > million, and a
> > trillion was a million billion.
>
> Why isn't a trillion a million million? :)
Like a previous message said, the bi-, tri-, quadri-, etc. prefixes were
originally intended to denote the power that million was raised to: a
billion was a million squared [a million million], a trillion was a million
cubed [a million million million], etc.
What probably happened was that the name for 10^9th [a milliard] was deemed
too weird and confusing [and too French :P ]. Why have two naming
conventions that alternated? [Million, Milliard, Billion, Billiard,
Trillion, etc.]
The alternative [a thousand million] got to confusing too quickly, as
someone pointed out earlier. However, keep in mind that we commonly say
things like "Two hundred Billion, Seven Hundred and Fifty Million, Six
Hundred Twenty-five Thousand, Four Hundred and Fifteen" repeating the
hundred adjective, so repeating the thousands is in the same vein. However,
the "stack depth" of using thousands makes it hard to keep track of where
you're at in the number.
Probably, as a consequence, one naming convention was dropped and we have
the "American" way of billion = 10^9, etc. This obviously has no relation
ship to the name [bi- million implies 2*1,000,000 or 1,000,000^2 not
1,000,000^1.5], but has stuck, most likely, because it's simpler to keep
track of than the million, milliard, billion, billiard method. And it's
definitely simpler than using thousand millions, etc.
ON-TOPIC! :)
Has anyone found a good use for that paddle/flipper thing?? Like how to
securely attach it to anything?
Jeremy Morton
a-jeremm@microsoft.com
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