

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

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derrickc
splains why the bailout is not freaking everyone out

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joss82
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, ...

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RiderOfGiraffes
<http://xkcd.com/558/>

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chaosmachine
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.

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anigbrowl
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?

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ckinnan
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.

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

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asmithmd1
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

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vladocar
Just Wolfram-it
[http://www51.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000000000000%2F10000...](http://www51.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000000000000%2F1000000)

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matt1
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.

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axod
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.

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alex_c
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.

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ajuc
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.

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jerf
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_

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

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ars
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.

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alex_c
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.

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smanek
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

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zackattack
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

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smanek
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.

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zackattack
You didn't read my post. For what it's worth, I know how to divide with
exponents. I'm curious why you think converting to exponents in the first
place is so much more obvious.

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stevenjames
What a trillion dollars looks like:

[http://www.zee.me/blog/2009/03/what-does-one-trillion-
dollar...](http://www.zee.me/blog/2009/03/what-does-one-trillion-dollars-look-
like/)

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swombat
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?

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JacobAldridge
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>

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lucumo
Still doesn't make it relevant to this discussion, though.

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lucumo
Can the person who downvoted this, explain why it _is_ relevant? Thanks.

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amelim
People are downvoting you because you are doing nothing to add to the
conversation. Why not try to formulate your comments into a more meaningful
discussion?

