How many millions are in a trillion?

http://econ4u.org/blog/index.php/2009/05/01/poll-how-many-millions-are-in-a-trillion/

by RiderOfGiraffes • 17 years ago

21 33 17 years ago

econ4u.org

stevenjames• 17 years ago

What a trillion dollars looks like:

http://www.zee.me/blog/2009/03/what-does-one-trillion-dollar...

swombat• 17 years ago

Thank you for this awesome, insightful contribution to the conversation... not.

Edit: seriously, do we upvote people for posting reddit-like links to vaguely related non-information now?

JacobAldridge• 17 years ago

The graphic has done the rounds in many, many places, but it did generate 46 points and 35 comments here a few months back without an ad redditum comment.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=511285

axod• 17 years ago

Depends what country you're from.

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

Personally I'm in the Long scale camp. It makes far more sense. That's why I was confused to not see the 'correct' answer listed :)

For example in the Short scale, their logic is: billion= 1,000 ^ (1 + 2). So for example TRIllion, the tri is pretty unintuitive. It has 3+(3 * TRI) zeros.

In the Long scale, the logic is trillion=1,000,000^TRI or 6 * TRI zeros.

I had no idea the UK had 'officially' abandoned the Long scale in 1970s, while the rest of Europe still officially uses it. I'm sure I was taught Long scale. Shame.

alex_c3• 17 years ago

I always thought of it as a language-specific thing, with English speaking countries using short scale, and other European countries using long scale (I always thought that the French "billion" being equivalent to the English "trillion" was basically just an issue of translation). I never realized it's quite that complicated and inconsistent.

jmathes• 17 years ago

In the long scale, it's like this: 10^3 = thousand 10^6 = million 10^9 = milliard 10^12 = billion 10^15 = billiard 10^18 = trillion

So there are 10^18/10^6 = 10^12 millions in a trillion. In the long scale, they'd call that a billion. So the two correct answers are "there are a million millions in a trillion" and "there are a billion millions in a trillion"

smanek2• 17 years ago

I've heard the idea bandied about that we should just drop the ambiguous names (w.r.t., the whole long/short scale thing) and start using scientific notation.

It is much more obvious that 10^12/10^6 = 10^6

zackattack3• 17 years ago

Why is it much more obvious? I would probably understand if I knew how you went about solving the problem. I am quite curious as to your thought process!

My thought process involved these components:

1. Remembering heuristics for proportions. 2. Remembering that Million -> billion -> trillion 3. Knowing that 1000 million = 1 billion 4. Knowing that 1000 billion = 1 trillion 5. Knowing that 1000 * 1000 = 1 million

smanek2• 17 years ago

Dividing numbers with exponents is simple - you just subtract.

A^B / A^C = A^(B-C)

This is an obvious result of the rules of arithmetic. To use a concrete example: A^3/A^2 = A because A^3 is A x A x A divided by A^2 is A x A, then the two A's on the bottom cancel out with two of the A's on the top - leaving only one A on the top.

RiderOfGiraffes2• 17 years ago

I remember the tale of a programmer talking to his manager. When his manager asked how close he was to completion the programmer said that if there were 10^6 things to do, they had done 10^3.

The manager said "Great! We're halfway there!"

I'm not sure scientific notation would "solve the problem".

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

Ten to the power of six? That's like a cube, right, because a cube has six sides, right?

alex_c3• 17 years ago

That's what you get for not using the metric system.

zackattack3• 17 years ago

This raises the question of whether British children are proportionately better at math problems involving proportionality!

ars• 17 years ago

As you realized in your post a little later, it has nothing to do with the metric system, and if anything in this the US is more "metric" if you will, then the EU.

alex_c3• 17 years ago

And the original article has nothing to do with the difference between short scale and long scale.

Not being used to thinking in terms of multiples of 10 (or 1000) for all measurements might have a fair bit to do with it.

RiderOfGiraffes2• 17 years ago

http://xkcd.com/558/

ckinnan• 17 years ago

I saw some political polling a couple years ago-- people can't really conceptualize numbers this large. A slight majority of the poll actually thought a million dollars was more than a billion. People have a handle on the size of a million bucks because that amount occurs in regular life-- the price of a luxury home, etc. I think one of the reasons there isn't much outrage at the US government's $1.8 trillion deficit this year is that it is so large it doesn't have any meaning.

eru• 17 years ago

Yes. Stating the deficit per capita might put it in a better perspective for most people (e.g. me).

asmithmd1• 17 years ago

I think better to report the numbers per US household instead of per capita to give a realistic idea of your share. There are roughly 100 Million US households so for the $3.5 Trillion budget = 3.5 X 10^12/10^8 = $35,000/household That is a number I can understand

chaosmachine• 17 years ago

Part of the problem is trillion sounds just like billion. Your brain hears it and thinks "way bigger than a million", and stops calculating right there. I imagine most people would tell you a "zillion" is a million millions, though.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

You've probably heard it, but there was a joke floating around before the last election: the secretary of defense goes to see the President and says Sir, there's been an unfortunate terrorist attack in South America. 5 Brazilian soldiers died. The President thinks about it and says, That's a real tragedy. And, ah...how many is a brazillion, again?

joss82• 17 years ago

Are you somewhat happy to know that you are in the "elite", the top 21% of people who actually understand the world a bit ? Or are you sad at the rest ? They have no clue. Or they are plain wrong and don't even know it. I wonder if that metric could be applied to other topics like religion, government spending, ...

ajuc• 17 years ago

I've nerver understanded why exactly english metric system, date formating, and naming of big numbers is so inconsistent.

When you write date, you have to natural way - from the the least significant bit:) to the most, and the other way around.

And Americans use month/day/year. Perfectly intuitive :)

Likewise - in long scale system there is simple rule - next name for big number is 10^3 times bigger.

Indian system is also consistent, but mixing this is just crazy.

And don't get me started about inches, feets etc.

Still, I shouldn't complain - in my language there are three possible words for most of the nouns - for example: 1 jablko, 2-4 jablka, 5-21 jablek, 22-24 jablka, 25-31 jablek, 32-34 jablka, etc :)

Of course then you have to conjugate every noun by apropriate case (one of 7).

That's becouse old Polish had Singular, Plural and SomethingInBetweenWhichICantFindEnglishWordFor.

So - embrace our diversity - scientist will use 10^n anyway.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

That's becouse old Polish had Singular, Plural and SomethingInBetweenWhichICantFindEnglishWordFor.

The word is "dual" for the marked number between "singular" and "plural." Some other Indo-European languages, and some languages from other language families, distinguish singular, dual, and plural. I like languages like Chinese with no marked number at all in nouns, so words don't change form as you count things.

jerf• 17 years ago

I have a theory that the linguistic complexity of all languages and cultures (which I'd include things like measurements in) is a constant.

It's truly a beautiful theory, because "linguistic complexity" is virtually undefinable, so I can just define it such that my theory is true-by-tautology. Hooray!

However, it is true that all languages and cultures have historical quirks, irregular verbs, odd calendars, etc. Complaining about a specific one is just standing in a glass house and throwing stones. By the only metric that really matters, the people using m/d/y are almost never confused about it, which is why it is stable in the language and doesn't get replaced, so... what more can you reasonably ask for?

Local optima happen. shrug

vladocar• 17 years ago

Just Wolfram-it http://www51.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000000000000%2F10000...

matt1• 17 years ago

You bring up a good point:

You can't easily make a verb out of their company name. There's no "Just Google it"...

Fail: "Just Wolfram it..." or "Just Wolfram-Alpha it"

A small point, maybe, but I wonder how much better they could have done with a better, less egotistical name.

acangiano• 17 years ago

Wolfram-it as it's meant to be: http://www51.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=trillion%2Fmillion

derrickc• 17 years ago

splains why the bailout is not freaking everyone out

How many millions are in a trillion?

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