[OT] Hey UK'rs, the million pence question..

[Richard Blade]

As I had a really bad day at work today and not wanting to go into NC with the intention of trying to gank noobs.. As that's all I could with my spy. But, now I think of it, I'd probably get ganked by the noobs and that would make my day worse.

So, I come to the forum to ask this question that has been bothering me for a while.

I'm somewhat logical when it comes to math. Not a mathmetician by any means, but programming and math always made sense. Logic.

I saw a thread some time ago that had something to do with "millions". In the U.S.A we have one million as 1,000,000 and as the thread stated, one million in the U.K. was 1,000,000,000. Which to me is one billion but anyway..

Ok, on to the question.
Is that only used in money?

** periods used to denote where comas should be**
We (U.S.A.) count 1, 10, 100, 1.000, 10.000, 100.000, 1.000.000, etc.

How does the U.K. count? (besides with toes and dropped pants.. :angel: )

Does it skip the 1.000.000 or do you call it something else?
And if you do, could you name them in sequence? ( alphabetically as opposed to the number.)

Much appreciated,
RB

[GambitFlame]

Same in the UK

Dunno who said a mill was 1,000,000,000 cos as far as i know in the UK a million is still 1,000,000.

So we count

1 - 10 - 100 - 1000 - 10,000 - 100,000 - 1,000,000

[-REMUS-]

EDIT: Well i miss read that completely!

Of course we count the same I dont know why you would think otherwise?

[Richard Blade]

I'll have to try and find the thread.

[Mr_Snow]

The difference is with billions, americans traditonally see it as 1000 million whereas it was always seen as a million million on the european side of the atlantic but the common meaning of the word has changed to the american sense for the most part now.

[Richard Blade]

The difference is with billions, americans traditonally see it as 1000 million whereas it was always seen as a million million on the european side of the atlantic but the common meaning of the word has changed to the american sense for the most part now.

Yep, my bad.

Here's the thread. (http://forum.neocron.com/showthread.php?t=98356&highlight=1%2C000%2C000%2C000)

It was 2 billion instead of million and somebody said million million.
I now understand the difference somewhat. It will sink in more later.


Thanks for the help!

edit: Well, now that opens up the same question. When we skip from million to billion, what numbers would be used for the added steps in counting for you?

edit2: Before I read more, let me try this... 1 mil, 100 mil, 1.000 mil, 100.000 mil.
I'm going to have to take some time to digest that if it's right.

[jernau]

A million was originally 100,000,000,000.

For some reason the US decided it was 100,000,000 at some point. I think it was so then we could have billionaires but I can't prove that.

After many years of wrangling the rest of the world gave in trying to explain it to them and we all now use their version to save confusion.

Millions were never disputed afaik.

We are not changing the meaning of rubber, boot, pants or pavement though. :p


/edit - we never had words for the intermediary orders.

[Birkoff]

10*10= one hundred
100*100 = one thousand
1000*1000 = 1 million

in the UK


But i was told sommin like that as well, i swear there was a difference :S

I thoguht 1,000,000,000 was the American one

[Richard Blade]

I think it was our half assed attempt to convert to the metric system.

Trying to keep things in step of 1,000. ad infin..er what ever that was.

This makes me think though.
If we are now missing millions of numbers, how can our math be right?

uh, I think I got that too. A 1 with zeros behind it is still a value of a certain quantity, no matter what we call it.

I suppose it won't matter in a billion years. :p

Thanks again.

[Epsilon 5]

A cookie to the first who can say how many zeros there is after the 1 if i say i have a quattuordecillion credits (not counting decimals) ;)

[jernau]

For the curious - http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/SI%20prefix


I had forgotten Milliard - the old non-US name for a US million.

[Richard Blade]

I'm hungry, and an uneducated guess.

4000?




For the curious - http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/SI%20prefix


I had forgotten Milliard - the old non-US name for a US million.

Sweet, thanks Jernau.

[jernau]

NP

There are other unofficial and proposed prefixes and suffixes, some less sensible than others but those are the only ones that you can use and expect to be understood.

[Birkoff]

Selling drom skin 1 SEXtillion credits

[Epsilon 5]

For the curious - http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/SI%20prefix


I had forgotten Milliard - the old non-US name for a US million.

One odd thing about french (which i speak fluently) - is that each step is said twice as opposed to english, but with a variant. Yes, it does get confusing

million - million
billion - milliard
trillion - billion
quadrillion - billiard
quintillion - quadrillion
sextillion - quadrilliard

This is still what we use in french (even here in Québec). The European way of saying large numbers is actually the French way of saying it. I don't know why it's different in America, but then again, the USA still use the imperial system (instead of metric) despite the fact that its creator stopped using it itself.

I still can't find anyone who prefers the imperial system that can answer me how many inches there are in 3.5 miles :lol:

[jernau]

221,760

[Epsilon 5]

yeah but can you tell me that without knowing the answer or having a calculator/conversion sheet available?

[jernau]

It's not that hard.


I know what you're saying though, the imperial system is a worse system technically. In practice though it all comes down to what you were brought up on.

I know intuitively what a pound of bacon/cheese/whatever is when I look at or handle it for instance but I would have to do a mental conversion first to say the same for a kilo of anything. In the UK we officially use the metric system for weights but I almost never see anyone ask for kilos of food in the shops.

Long distances are similar - no-one here thinks in kilometres though most are happy using either system for short distances (metres, feet, yards, inches, cm).

Some things are still changing - ten years ago few people could have told you the price of a litre of petrol because we always talked of it in gallons, now it's the other way round (though thanks to our useless thieving government the price is about the same :mad:). The same will happen with weights in a few years I'm sure as people get forced to learn that way (they keep strengthening the pro-metric laws because even now ~40 years after we officially adopted it we don't want to use it).

Drinks in pubs are another one : most spirits legally have to be measured in metric but there would be riots in the streets if they tried to make us buy our beer that way. Bottled and canned drinks in shops though are all metric.


It probably sounds complicated but it seems natural to us. :D


/edit - If you want really complicated you should try working on cars here, especially ones that were made both before and after we allegedly converted to metric. You really don't want to get foot-pounds and newton-metres mixed up on clutch bolts.


/edit 2 - 2 things that just occured to me (yeah I can't sleep....) - 1) most astronomical calculations within the solar system use a system not dis-similar in origin the imperial one (based on all sorts of arbitrary non-constant numbers) though the results are expressed in metric ultimately. 2) Almost everyone still uses the knot and nautical mile (although very few understand them).

[Epsilon 5]

well over here we use kilometers for distances, kilometers per hour for speeds, most liquid are measured in liters (except when it ends up being exactly a gallon), but food and other weights are mixed pounds and kilos ... usually most items in stores have grams and kilos written on them, but prices for food such as fruits, vegetable and meat are mainly in pounds with kilos written under in a smaller font, but that's probably because saying something is 0.79$/lb sounds cheaper than 1.74$/kg ;)

Also, i know i weight 170 pounds, but i couldn't tell you offhand what i weight in kilos :P

[jernau]

Likewise, I can only do people's weights in stone.

We have most things labelled in both nowadays. Recently they made it law that shops have to have the metric one in bigger print if both are there and that metric must always be there. One major supermarket chain told them to blow it out their arse and AFAIK nothing happened to them. I don't know for sure but I think they later complied voluntarily.

[Omnituens]

100*100 = one thousand in the UK
thats 10,000 = ten thousand