Poll: One Billion

[Woodsey]

I'm pretty sure the standardised version of a billion in both countries is now 1000 x million.

So recently I have learnt that the UK and the US have diffrent defintions of 1 Billion.

In the UK, one billion is one million x million

In the US, one billion is 1000 x Million

I like in England and ive always thought of it as 1000 x M because it made sense to me.
Just wondering whats your view on one billion and did you know there were variations?

um dunno where ur getting this from but my old tai kwon doe instructor was also a banker (i live in uk) and in his bank a billion was 100x 1000 000

100 x 1,000,000 is 100 million.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Um... no?
1 Billion = 1,000,000,000
1,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000
1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000

So... A better question is, why is UK bad at math?

SNAP! This should help explain it.

 

[HighLordJimmy]

I'm pretty sure even the UK 'officially' uses the short scale version (i.e. the US version). To my knowledge both are actually French inventions that spread, I don't know how the labelling of British and American came about...

 

[DreadedTuesday]

The US billion in old english was a 'milliard' (a thousand million), but we switched to the US billion for convenience, and milliard is no longer in use. Which is a shame, it has a nice ring to it.

 

[El Poncho]

I'm from the UK and I was taught it was 1,000,000,000.

 

[Daverson]

I don't use Billions. I just go with the more science-y definition of 10^9 and 10^12. Because, why write something longhand, when you can write it shorthand?

And that, is why all scientists and doctors have terrible handwriting.

 

[Matt King]

I'm pretty sure the standardised version of a billion in both countries is now 1000 x million.

So recently I have learnt that the UK and the US have diffrent defintions of 1 Billion.

In the UK, one billion is one million x million

In the US, one billion is 1000 x Million

I like in England and ive always thought of it as 1000 x M because it made sense to me.
Just wondering whats your view on one billion and did you know there were variations?

um dunno where ur getting this from but my old tai kwon doe instructor was also a banker (i live in uk) and in his bank a billion was 100x 1000 000

100 x 1,000,000 is 100 million.

i mean 1000 x 1,000,000

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

yeah i remember seeing this a few years ago, i disregarded it as it boggled my mind if people truly used that. it makes no sense if you are using the same rules for all the other numbers.

 

[Cain_Zeros]

There's a difference? I literally didn't know that. Um...

The one without 12 zeros seems to be what we use.

Canadian here.

I'm Canadian too, we use the nine zero one as far as I've seen. 1,000,000,000 = One billion.

 

[Absimilliard]

In Norwegian, the word billion refers to a million x million, and we have a separate word (milliard) for 1000 x million.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

A billion? How petty.

I require [i/]one hundred billion![/i]

 

[Stasisesque]

A billion? How petty.

I require [i/]one hundred billion![/i]

I spotted your avatar in a thread the other day - as soon as I saw this thread go up I was praying you'd spot it.

Brilliance.

 

[DanielBrown]

One billion is 1,000,000,000 according to what I've learned.

 

[SomebodyNowhere]

it's like the song goes:
One million is big
One billion is bigger
One thousand times one million
That's one billion

 

[mb16]

Im from the UK and
1,000,000 is a million
1,000,000,000 is a billion
1,000,000,000,000 is a trillion

or my favorite number the Sexdecillion which has 51 zeros after it

EDIT also:
The British billion is 1000,000,000 as elsewhere. The 'old' billion was 1000,000,000,000 as in 1975 Chancellor Denis Healey announced that the treasury would adopt the US billion thenceforth.

 

[DrVengeance]

10 to the power of 1(insert 100 0's here) is

The resulting number is so large you could not actually write it down in full over the length of the universe. Apparently.

I think you're thinking of a googolplex
10^10^100 or 10^googol


I use the long hand version, maybe my mindset is old fashioned.

 

[Exort]

You think that's crazy? Go to China or India, and you'll find they do big numbers in groups of four, producing numbesr that look like this: 1,00,00,000 etc, as opposed to 10,000,000). Look up the Indian "Crore".

I like a million millions being a billion, but the change to the American sytem is sensible. If you think 1000 million=1 billion is wrong, then why are you okay with 10 hundreds making 1000? Shouldn't you want it to be 100 hundreds?

it should be 1,0000,0000. It is just 4 digits in a group instead of 3. How is that crazy?