Required XKCD reference: http://xkcd.com/558/

To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost 
interchangeable terms. Which is worrying, because those are /very 
different/ quantities. They're not even remotely similar. But it seems 
that when talking about large numbers, people get a kind of "numbness" 
where the quantities are so vast that they seemingly might as well be 
non-finite.

But you know what? As far as I can tell, almost nobody mixes up a 
kilowatt and a megawatt. Nobody confuses centimetres with millimetres. 
No one has trouble with a gram and a kilogram being very different 
quantities. And when was the last time you saw somebody [who has a clue] 
mix up a gigabyte and a terabyte?

So, perhaps what we need to do is start measuring money using SI 
prefixes. For surely 165 megadollars is clearly smaller than 170 
gigadollars.

Sadly, I fear that for some, 20 millicents /will/ equal 20 millidollars.

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On 05/03/2012 9:59 AM, Invisible wrote:
> To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost
> interchangeable terms.

Names and addresses of at least three people who use them 
interchangeably? (Your mother does not count.)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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> On 05/03/2012 9:59 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost
>> interchangeable terms.
>
> Names and addresses of at least three people who use them
> interchangeably? (Your mother does not count.)
>
Well, if she uses them interchangeably, she definitely does not count 
very well!

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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On 05/03/2012 1:06 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>>
> Well, if she uses them interchangeably, she definitely does not count
> very well!

LOL

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 05/03/12 11:59, Invisible wrote:
> Required XKCD reference: http://xkcd.com/558/
> 
> To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost
> interchangeable terms. 

In Finnish we have "miljoona" (equals "million"), "miljardi" (equals
"billion") and "biljoona" (equals "trillion", not "billion"). Now when
someone translates a news article from some USA news service that
contains billion, it gets sometimes translated as "biljoona", which is
actually 1000 times more.

Actually, checking Wikipedia, it's not just us:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers .

-- Arttu Voutilainen

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On 05/03/2012 03:07 PM, Arttu Voutilainen wrote:
> On 05/03/12 11:59, Invisible wrote:
>> Required XKCD reference: http://xkcd.com/558/
>>
>> To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost
>> interchangeable terms.
>
> In Finnish we have "miljoona" (equals "million"), "miljardi" (equals
> "billion") and "biljoona" (equals "trillion", not "billion"). Now when
> someone translates a news article from some USA news service that
> contains billion, it gets sometimes translated as "biljoona", which is
> actually 1000 times more.
>
> Actually, checking Wikipedia, it's not just us:

No wonder MS Word has been advising people to just avoid the word 
"billion" altogether. It's too ambiguous...

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On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 09:59:40 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost
> interchangeable terms.

I think I'd want a cite specifically for non-hyperbolic usages (some 
people 'interchange' the terms when used as hyperbole, that doesn't 
really count as interchanging them.

Jim

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost 
> interchangeable terms.

> But you know what? As far as I can tell, almost nobody mixes up a 
> kilowatt and a megawatt.

  In the same way as nobody mixes up a thousand and a million.

> Nobody confuses centimetres with millimetres. 

  In the same way as nobody confuses a hundred with a thousand.

> No one has trouble with a gram and a kilogram being very different 
> quantities.

  In the same way as no one having trouble distinguishing between 1 and
a thousand.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> Required XKCD reference: http://xkcd.com/558/
>
> To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost
> interchangeable terms. Which is worrying, because those are /very
> different/ quantities. They're not even remotely similar. But it seems
> that when talking about large numbers, people get a kind of "numbness"
> where the quantities are so vast that they seemingly might as well be
> non-finite.
>
> But you know what? As far as I can tell, almost nobody mixes up a
> kilowatt and a megawatt. Nobody confuses centimetres with millimetres.
> No one has trouble with a gram and a kilogram being very different
> quantities. And when was the last time you saw somebody [who has a clue]
> mix up a gigabyte and a terabyte?
>
> So, perhaps what we need to do is start measuring money using SI
> prefixes. For surely 165 megadollars is clearly smaller than 170
> gigadollars.
>
> Sadly, I fear that for some, 20 millicents /will/ equal 20 millidollars.

It's even worst when you speak French. We have an additional step 
between million, billion, trillion...

million = 1000000 = 10^6
milliard = 1000000000 or 1000 millions = 10^9
billion = 1000000000000 or 1 millions millions = 10^12
billiard = 10^15
trillion = 1 million billions = 10^18
trilliard = 10^21
quatrillion = 1 millions trillions = 10^24
quatrilliard = 10^27
quintillion = 10^30
quintilliard = 10^33
...

Alain

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On 3/5/2012 10:12 AM, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> To most people, "million", "billion" and "trillion" are almost
>> interchangeable terms.
>
>> But you know what? As far as I can tell, almost nobody mixes up a
>> kilowatt and a megawatt.
>
>    In the same way as nobody mixes up a thousand and a million.

Echoes my thoughts exactly; a thousand-fold difference "mentally" 
matters much more for smaller numbers.  I'd imagine that mix-ups 
between, say,  megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes are as common as 
those between million, billion, and trillion.  It's also a bit rare that 
I see either of these errors, so I don't know where Invisible got the 
"to most people" aspect, although surveys testing the general public's 
math knowledge tend to be scary enough that I suppose it's possible.

One error I *do* see all the time though, is a misuse of the term 
"exponential" to mean anything superlinear (or just "a lot").  In 
informal conversation it's a little grating, but sort of ok since it's a 
relatively standard use of the word.  When grading physics labs, 
however, I saw parabolas called "exponential" more often than I saw them 
called anything correct, and it drove my absolutely bonkers.

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