1 Billion or 1000 Million?

[Rodstar (Rod)]

When I was at school, we learnt in Maths that the Australian and British convention was that 1 Billion was equal to 1 million millions, but that the American convention was that 1 Billion was 1000 millions. We were required to follow the Australian/British convention.

It seems over time that the American convention is winning out. So, these days, when the Australian media refers to, say, a $11 billion stimulus package, they are referring to $11,000 million. This usage of the word billion also seems to have seeped into the numerical system referred to in amateur astronomical publications, but not completely consistently.

The net result is that I often a bit hesitant about what is meant when, for example, it is said that the Milky Way has 200 billion stars. Is that 200 million million stars, or just 200,000 million stars? Both are large figures, but the difference is still rather enormous (1000x).

I would have thought that by now the academic scientific community would have determined a unified system, which I would expect to be the American system. Does anyone know or have an opinion on this issue?

I would prefer to go with the Australian/British system, but I fear that the tide is strongly carrying us in the other direction!

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

I have an opinion on it, but I can't write it here because I'd be in trouble Suffice to say that I think the situation is farcical to say the very least. I can share with you the reason (shallow as it is), why the dual billion value came into vogue.

Our dear friends in the USA always want to be first at everything including having more billionaires than anyone else, so making the billion a lottttttttttt smaller permitted them to have more billionaires per capita and of course this was a huge 'promotional' point, back in the day

Anywhoo, I wish I had a billion, in any scale

[RB (Andrew)]

I was taught that 1 billion was 1000 million.

[renormalised (Carl)]

It's more commonly enumerated as 1000 million = 1 billion. It used to be 1 million million was 1 billion, but that has pretty much fallen by the wayside.

Oh BTW....it's 400 billion (the convention, now), although a few studies have put that upto 795-800 billion stars!!

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by Rodstar

I would prefer to go with the Australian/British system, but I fear that the tide is strongly carrying us in the other direction!

The tide went out a long time ago. As with British versus USA spelling, thanks to Microsoft.

[Enchilada]

Originally Posted by tailwag

I have an opinion on it, but I can't write it here because I'd be in trouble

Me too!!

[PeterM]

This table is explains it well for both US and no US countries. Of particular interest and note, particularly for stars in the galaxy is that it states that the scientific community "seems" to use the US system. http://www.jimloy.com/math/billion.htm
PeterM

[leon]

Yep 1000, million dose it, can you imagine being a rich as Bill Gates, some 90 billion, now that would be heaps if one billion, was a million million, bloody hell one million would do me nicely.

I reckon if one has 10 million, or 100 million, it makes no difference, you are still filthy rich.

Leon

[gary]

Originally Posted by Rodstar

When I was at school, we learnt in Maths that the Australian and British convention was that 1 Billion was equal to 1 million millions, but that the American convention was that 1 Billion was 1000 millions. We were required to follow the Australian/British convention.

It seems over time that the American convention is winning out.

Hi Rod,

I think in most of the English speaking financial, engineering and scientific world,
one billion being equivalent to 10-to-the-ninth power has now pretty much won the day.

It all goes back to what the French called échelle courte and échelle longue,
which were two different numeric naming systems which in English were
known as the short scale and the long scale.

Apparently even the British officially abandoned the long scale in 1974.
See this Wikipedia article for additional detail -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

When I say "most of the English speaking world", one obvious exception is
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh & Nepal. I have been to all four of these countries
and they have this arguably quirky number naming system whereby 100,000 is
known as a "lakh" and 10,000,000 (i.e. 100 lakh) is known as a crore.
You will be reading the newspaper there and they will say something like
4 Crore 27 Lakh Rupees and you have to do mental gymnastics to work
out how much they are talking about.

Add to the confusion that they write 123,456,789 as 12,34,56,789.

It even gets more confusing in Germany where they use commas for
decimal points and decimal points as commas.

The net result is that I often a bit hesitant about what is meant when, for example, it is said that the Milky Way has 200 billion stars. Is that 200 million million stars, or just 200,000 million stars? Both are large figures, but the difference is still rather enormous (1000x).

Unless the article is British and older than about pre-1974, when they say a
billion they mean one times ten to the ninth power.

I would have thought that by now the academic scientific community would have determined a unified system, which I would expect to be the American system. Does anyone know or have an opinion on this issue?

In Scientific and Engineering circles, we tend to avoid it wherever possible
by using either scientific or engineering notation whereby everything is expressed
in terms of a powers of ten numerically. Engineers love to use powers of
ten where the exponent is a multiple of 3, so ten to the three, ten to the six, ten to
the ninth, etc. This is no coincidence as it works in with the preferred units
in the SI measurement system. In Electrical Engineering journals, if an article says
"a billion" they are referring to ten to the 9th but articles only tend to use the term when
referring to money and tend to revert to numerical engineering notation for most
things technical.

I would prefer to go with the Australian/British system, but I fear that the tide is strongly carrying us in the other direction!

Alas, the long scale system has long departed.

Best Regards

Gary

[MrB (Simon)]

What Gary said, but will add that in engineering a billion is 'Giga'

f  femto 10^-15  0.000,000,000,000,001
p  pico  10^-12  0.000,000,000,001
n  nano  10^-09  0.000,000,001
u  micro 10^-06  0.000,001
m  milli 10^-03  0.001
-  UNIT  10^00   1
k  kilo  10^03   1000
M  Mega  10^06   1000,000
G  Giga  10^09   1000,000,000
T  Tera  10^12   1000,000,000,000
P  Peta  10^15   1000,000,000,000,000

Anyone involved with computers will be familiar with Mega, Giga, Tera etc.
Anyone involved with electronics will be familiar with micro, nano, pico etc

EDIT: Haha, could've saved myself time formatting that by linking to this chart on Wikipedia...SI Prefix
Chart includes long and short scale names too.
Whole pile of prefixes I've never come across in that chart, like Eta, Zetta, Yotta, atto zepto, yocto...

[markcollier8 (Mark)]

I was always taught that its the number of Zero's that make the eventual EXP so 1,000, 100,000, 1,000,000, & 1,000,000,000= 1Billion a step further 1,000,000,000,000= 1Trillion I know the Yanks are Imperialist but I never knew they took things that far!! Ps And I thought I was old school!

[Gerald Sargent]

The "Imperial" Billion was indeed 10 raised to the power 12, not the American power of 9,
it is an example of American love of exaggeration, which in recent months had led to the
"recession we had to have". The quicker we adopt the Euro as the internation currency
the quicker we can see the problem of the American $ properly devalued and their debt
pushed home to roost, and we can get back to normality - just got a very old memory -
Gerald.

[markcollier8 (Mark)]

Originally Posted by MrB

What Gary said, but will add that in engineering a billion is 'Giga'

f  femto 10^-15  0.000,000,000,000,001
p  pico  10^-12  0.000,000,000,001
n  nano  10^-09  0.000,000,001
u  micro 10^-06  0.000,001
m  milli 10^-03  0.001
-  UNIT  10^00   1
k  kilo  10^03   1000
M  Mega  10^06   1000,000
G  Giga  10^09   1000,000,000
T  Tera  10^12   1000,000,000,000
P  Peta  10^15   1000,000,000,000,000

Anyone involved with computers will be familiar with Mega, Giga, Tera etc.
Anyone involved with electronics will be familiar with micro, nano, pico etc

EDIT: Haha, could've saved myself time formatting that by linking to this chart on Wikipedia...SI Prefix
Chart includes long and short scale names too.
Whole pile of prefixes I've never come across in that chart, like Eta, Zetta, Yotta, atto zepto, yocto...

I did did Elect Eng & I had a Calc there not like at School where I used my fingers & toes etc ..Even thou I had a Calculator the formula's were that long I still got em' wrong lucky that was only 20% of marks or I would have failed!!

[markcollier8 (Mark)]

I have a gripe instead of a 2mth holiday to USA costing 10grand it cost me $20G!!!

[markcollier8 (Mark)]

Originally Posted by markcollier8

I did did Elect Eng & I had a Calc there not like at School where I used my fingers & toes etc ..Even thou I had a Calculator the formula's were that long I still got em' wrong lucky that was only 20% of marks or I would have failed!!

Just remembered I used to get confused about when it came to going past 20 on my fingers & toes no wonder my maths was so poor + 2/3 of the time I was outside the class & not inside!!

[AndrewJ]

All this is well and good
but how many gallons are there in a Firkin?
( hint, only works with British Gallons )
That's the good thing about standards
If you don't like the one being used,
you can always choose another

Andrew

[Barrykgerdes]

Like all the oldies on this forum I learnt the imperial system that 1 billion was 1000000 million. But I would be just as happy with a US $billion as an English billion pounds. I wouldn not be ablle to spend it all in any case.

Barry

[Kal (Andrew)]

If you trust wiki, then the long system was abandoned by the UK in 1974:


The long and short scales are two different numerical systems used throughout the world:
Short scale is the English translation of the French term échelle courte.[1] It refers to a system of numeric names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000 times the previous term: "billion" means "a thousand millions" (109), "trillion" means "a thousand billions" (1012), and so on. Long scale is the English translation of the French term échelle longue. It refers to a system of numeric names in which every new term greater than thousand is 1,000,000 times the previous term: "billion" (from bi and million) means "a million to the power of two" or "a million millions" (1012), "trillion" (from tri an million) means "a million to the power of three" or "a million billions" (1018), and so on. Note that the difference between the two scales grows as numbers get larger. Million is the same in both scales, but the long-scale billion is a thousand times larger than the short-scale billion, the long-scale trillion is a million times larger than the short-scale trillion, and so on.
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the United Kingdom uniformly used the long scale,[2] while the United States of America used the short scale,[2] so that usage of the two systems was often referred to as "British" and "American" respectively. In 1974 the government of the UK abandoned the long scale, so that the UK now exclusively applies the short scale interpretation in mass media and official usage.[3][4][5] Although some residual usage of the long scale continues in the UK, the phrases "British usage" and "American usage" are no longer accurate or helpful characterizations. The two systems can be a subject of controversy and can arouse emotion. Usage changes can evoke resentment in adherents to the older system, while national differences of any kind can acquire patriotic overtones. [6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

[Rodstar (Rod)]

Thanks a million, everyone, for some great input!

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by Rodstar

Thanks a million, everyone, for some great input!

Only a Million