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What comes after trillion?

Started by jollyjeffers Sep 12, 2003 at 5:39 AM 67 replies 17k views

Original Post

245

Sep 12, 2003 at 5:39 AM

hi, this may be an amazingly silly question... but I haven't been able to find out from anyone yet... what comes after billion... ten, hundred, thousand, million, billion, zillion?, gazillion?, magillion?

reason I ask is that I have this number: 1,027,696,695,308,843,560,791,015,624 and I don't know how to say/write it in English

{???} five hundred and sixty billion, seven hundred and ninety one million, fifteen thousand and six hundred and twenty four any ideas? cheers, Jack [edited by - Jollyjeffers on September 12, 2003 7:01:48 AM]

Willm

Sep 12, 2003 at 5:47 AM

A Quintillion is 10^18

Why not use an amusing metaphor like, if you stacked 1,027,696,695,308,843,560,791,015,624 aol cds on top of each other it would reach the moon, or something.

Willm

Sep 12, 2003 at 5:50 AM

Better still, a octillion is 10^27. Doesnt sound so big now - you only have one of them.

jollyjeffers

Author

245

jollyjeffers

Sep 12, 2003 at 5:59 AM

I just realised that trillion is next up..

so it becomes:

one octillion, {???}, six hundred and ninety five quintillion, {???} eight hundred and forty three trillion, five hundred and sixty billion, seven hundred and ninety one million, fifteen thousand and six hundred and twenty four

quote:
Why not use an amusing metaphor like, if you stacked 1,027,696,695,308,843,560,791,015,624 aol cds on top of each other it would reach the moon, or something.

well I wouldn't stack them to the moon... I'd just use it as extended target practice against AOL HQ/marketing employees. They'd never send me another disk in my life

thanks willm
Jack

CRACKED IT:
1,027,696,695,308,843,560,791,015,624
thousand -> million -> billion -> trillion -> quadrillion -> quintillion -> sextillion -> septillion -> octillion -> nonillion -> decillion...

one octillion, twenty seven septillion, six hundred and ninety-six sextillion, six hundred and ninety-five quintillion, three hundred and eight quadrillion, eight hundred and forty-three trillion, five hundred and sixty billion, seven hundred and ninety-one million, fifteen thousand, six hundred and twenty four.

[edited by - Jollyjeffers on September 12, 2003 8:58:26 AM]

grhodes_at_work

Mod

197

grhodes_at_work

Sep 12, 2003 at 10:31 AM

googol = 10 raised to the power of 100
googolplex = 1 followed by a googol of zeros

(yes, the spellings are correct]

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

Keem

Sep 12, 2003 at 11:47 AM

Well we know a billion is 10^12 ( i.e. a million * million )
So you have One thousand and twenty seven billion billion. By convention A trillion would be a billion * billion so you have 1027 trillion. Simple

Edit: It looks like you've got your number wrong. It seems you have a billion = a thousand million, which is wrong. a billion = a million million.

[edited by - Keem on September 12, 2003 12:49:16 PM]

superdeveloper

Sep 12, 2003 at 11:52 AM

quote:
Original post by Keem
Well we know a billion is 10^12 ( i.e. a million * million )
So you have One thousand and twenty seven billion billion. By convention A trillion would be a billion * billion so you have 1027 trillion. Simple

Edit: It looks like you''ve got your number wrong. It seems you have a billion = a thousand million, which is wrong. a billion = a million million.

[edited by - Keem on September 12, 2003 12:49:16 PM]

Funny, I always thought that billion is 10^9 (i.e. thousand * million).

www.cppnow.com

Keem

Sep 12, 2003 at 11:57 AM

It depends where you are from. Here in Britain we use the correct versio, being 10^12 since the origin of the word is a ( french ) merging of bi ( meaning in this case power of two ) and million. For some reason some other countries treat it wrongly as 10^9.

Atheist

Sep 12, 2003 at 12:09 PM

hmm ... what is a correct convention? I think it´s mostly the convention used by the overwhelming majority of people. So since american english (quite surprised that the billion thing is different in BE and AE, btw) is the standard language in natural sciences and most probably also in computer sciences I´d stick with 1 billion = 10^9.

Your argument about BIllion being two millions seems sensible but conventions don´t nessecarily care about that (you wouldn´t want the speed of your car being given in fractions of the light speed).

What´s 10^9 in BE, btw ?

grhodes_at_work

Mod

197

grhodes_at_work

Sep 12, 2003 at 3:35 PM

What country uses billion = million ^ 2?

Also, the French seem to like "mill,":

milliardieme = billionth
millionieme = millionth
millieme = thousandth
mille = thousand
million = million
milliard = billion

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

jollyjeffers

Author

245

jollyjeffers

Sep 12, 2003 at 4:56 PM

i thought most countries had agreed to use scientific notation these days... as in it goes up in 1000''s (10^3)

rather than in the old days where a billion was a million millions, its now a billion is a thousand millions.?

Jack

DirectX 4 VB: All you need for multimedia programming in Visual Basic
Formula 1 Championship Manager, My Game Project.

Atheist

Sep 12, 2003 at 6:07 PM

>> What country uses billion = million ^ 2?

Germany for example. In german it´s quite obvious because the words are written exacly the same and "1 Million"=10^6 while "1 Billion"=10^12. For 10^9 we have "1 Milliarde".

But since we´re not speaking english we don´t run into troubles like Keem since you simply translate "1 Million"->1 million and "1 Milliarde"->1 billion.

Pseudo

Sep 12, 2003 at 9:03 PM

This is interesting because I''ve never heard of "billion" having a different meaning in other languages, but the fact is, this is an ENGLISH forum, so billion == 10^9.

C-Junkie

139

C-Junkie

Sep 12, 2003 at 9:44 PM

thousand
million
billion
trillion
quadrillion
quintillion
sextillion
septillion
octillion
nanillion
decillion

best i can remember ^^

Keem

Sep 13, 2003 at 1:31 AM

Woah! I never meant to start off an argument. I was simply pointing out that it depends on where you are. I dissagree that american english is the standard foe the sciences completely. Our lectures where vehement that we used english or european convntions ( even down to using ]3,5[ for an open invterval in some cases ), nad i only left university last year so i dont think its changed much.

As wolfram says 10^9 = milliard but we dont use it we''d just say 1000 billion.

Use what ever is suitable for your location. As this forum is largely american (not english, there is more of thoses yankie chaps

) this probably means 10^9 = billion here.

My appologies for any insult caused

Doc

Sep 13, 2003 at 2:05 AM

Everyone I''ve heard doesn''t bother with the ''illions. Scientific notation gets the job done without ambiguity. Why the hell would you want to recite a number that large anyway?

Kestrel

Sep 13, 2003 at 6:30 AM

Wouldn't it have been easier and faster to have looked it up in a dictionary or something?

[edited by - Kestrel on September 13, 2003 7:32:07 AM]

mitochondria

Sep 13, 2003 at 9:48 AM

lol... Firstly I agree with Kestrel, why aren't we looking up in a dictionary or something? So here you go, a definition from the Oxford Dictionary of Science:

billion 1. (in the UK and Germany) One million million, 10^12. 2. (in the USA and France) One thoudsand million, 10^9.

I guess everyone is satisified now

The mystery is solved finally... and ooh, secondly I must agree with Doc, why bother with the "illions"? Scientific notation is the way to go

Cheers

[edited by - mitochondria on September 13, 2003 10:50:20 AM]

psykr

Sep 13, 2003 at 1:19 PM

You people.. didn''t your math teacher ever yell at you for this?? "six hundred and twenty four" You only use "and" if there''s a decimal point!!

Thunder_Hawk

Sep 13, 2003 at 1:49 PM

quote:
Original post by psykr
You people.. didn''t your math teacher ever yell at you for this?? "six hundred and twenty four" You only use "and" if there''s a decimal point!!

Damn, I wanted to say that!

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