On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 12:23:14 +0200, Jens Ropers ropers@ropersonline.com wrote:
IMO the "milliard" convention is absolute rubbish, because it effectively breaks the decimal system and I'm glad it's in decline in the English speaking world. I wish the same were true for its use in other languages as well.
OK, we're drifting off-topic now, but I just wanted to say that I completely disagree. There's nothing "decimal" about million->billion->trillion going up in factors of a thousand rather than of a million, it's completely arbitrary. And etymologically, a billion being a million million makes sense: the "bi-" means "two", and it has twice as many zeros; similarly, a European trillion has three times as many zeros as a million, hence "tri-". What are there three of in an American trillion?
It's a moot point, because the American version seems to have become the accepted standard in the English-speaking world (better than just remaining ambiguous for eternity, I suppose), but the old way is far more logical. [I've actually heard it suggested that the change was so that people could call themselves "billionaires", but I'm not sure how much truth there can be in that]