Comment on 5 tomatoes

• CitizenKong@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Anglocentrism strikes again!

  source
• CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I think that’s one thing that’s actually fine about the English language though. Constantly switching between something ending with “ion” to “iard” instead of just counting up doesn’t make much sense to me personally.

  Million (1A), Milliard (1B), Billion (2A), Billiard (2B) seems odd compared to Million (1), Billion (2), Trillion (3), Quadrillion (4)

  I suppose the upside is that you don’t have to learn as many prefixes, but it’ll take another few years of inflation and wealth centralization (at least with currencies like the Euro, Dollar, or Pound) until Quadrillion is relevant in the financial sector and Mathematicians generally use letters. I suppose it makes other natural sciences a tiny bit easier, but there it’s usually written in scientific notation anyways.

  source

  • Hoimo@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The million-milliard system means a billion has double the zeroes compared to million, trillion has triple the zeroes, etc. In the English system, a quadrillion has 15 zeroes, so 4 times 3 plus 3? A quadrillion should have 4*6=24 zeroes.

    source

    • CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I must admit I still don’t see the point. Whether it’s double/triple/quadruple of a million or just 3*n+1 doesn’t seem to matter much. Of course it’d be better if a “thousand” was just called a “million” then, since that’d remove the +1, but the million milliard system doesn’t seem to have any notable advantages otherwise, especially considering every “iard” step is a .5 one, which isn’t much cleaner.

      1,000 -> 3x0+1 zeroes

      1,000,000 -> 3x1+1 zeroes

      1,000,000,000 -> 3x2+1 zeroes

      vs

      1,000,000 -> 1x6 zeroes

      (1,000,000,000 -> 1.5x6 zeroes)

      1,000,000,000,000 -> 2x6 zeroes

      (1,000,000,000,000,000 -> 2.5x6 zeroes)

      1,000,000,000,000,000,000 -> 3x6 zeroes

      source

      • guy@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        In the long system:
        Million - 1 000 000¹
        Billion - 1 000 000²
        Trillion - 1 000 000³

        Short system:
        Million - 1 000²
        Billion - 1 000³
        Trillion - 1 000⁴

        It just doesn't follow as smoothly with the increase in power

        source
• warm@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Crazy assumption.

  https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/milliard

  source

  • chellomere@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Crazy assumption. Yes, it’s true for the English speaking world, but it’s much more nuanced outside of it. Here’s a map from Wikipedia:

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#/me…

    Keep in mind that your link to wiktionary only covers languages where it is spelled exactly “milliard”.

    source