2001-10-22 We discussed this before, but never understood why we got it wrong. The German way is more logical and makes it easier to figure out from the names how many zeros follow the decimal point or komma.
Since 1 million has 6 zeros, 1 billion has 12......1 septillion would have 42. This is because sept means 7 and 7 x 6 = 42. To cover the big gap between million and billion, etc., the -iard, as in milliard, billiard and septiliard, suffix is added. This suffix adds 3 zeros to the -ion suffix preceding it. So, milliard is 6 zeros for million plus 3 or 9 , billiard is 12 zeros for billion plus 3 or 15 and septilliard is 42 zeros for septillion plus 3 or 45 zeros. Another way to look at it is the prefixes (bi, tri, sept, etc) denote to which power a million is raised to. Very easy. Yet, the Americans eliminate the entire -iard sequence and shift everything down, making it impossible to figure out what the names mean. For this reason it encourages Americans to be innumerate. It must have something to do with the American vs. European education philosophy. European education mainly is done by derivation. Teaching basics and learning how to derive unknowns. American education teaches rote memorisation. You memorise the meaning of number names, you don't derive their values from their names. And since it is hard to retain the memory after some time, the information is forgotten and the person appears ignorant. Despite the American practice, I use the European method. If I'm wrong, who will know? Or, just write out numbers in exponential form and let the other person figure it out. Yet, sometimes I find others don't want to figure it out and want me to do it, because they themselves don't know. So, you see America's ways just make it hard for everybody, including Americans. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wizard of OS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, 2001-10-20 11:51 Subject: [USMA:15736] enumerations in American english > hi, > > justed wanted to know this curiosity in AE: > > in britian an germany whe can 10^9 Milliard(e) you call it billion, why? > in germany billion means 10^12. > > and so on. > > > why do the americans that? > > _________________________________________________________________ > Downloaden Sie MSN Explorer kostenlos unter http://explorer.msn.de/intl.asp >
