The Indian numbering system marks odd power of ten, i.e. 10 ^ {1, 3, 5, 7}. Unit, thousand, lakh, crore [1].
Ours, on the other hand, does it mod 3, e.g. 10 ^ {1, 3, 6, 9}. Thousands, millions, billions, et cetera.
Ours, on the other hand, does it mod 3, e.g. 10 ^ {1, 3, 6, 9}. Thousands, millions, billions, et cetera.
To make matters more confusing, for American English it goes millions, billions, trillions. For British English it used to go millions, milliards, billions, billiards, trillions, trilliards. (That 'long scale' is still the way German used to work ten years ago. No clue if it changed in the meantime.)
"Eine Billion" is Million² bi -> 2 "Eine Billiarde" is 1000 * Million² "Eine Trillion" is million³ tri -> 3 "Eine Trilliarde" is 1000 * Million³ And so on
Yes I knew what a million, milliard, billion, billiarde and so on are, but it never made click that the long scale makes so much sense.
I also like the easy suffix for thousand (k), million (M), billion (B), trillion (T), quadrillion (Q) for written conversation. $10B revenue, 5k liters, 300M people, etc.
For anything bigger, you'd use 'scientific' notation anyway.
I think an exponential system would do better to have a different naming scheme.
Eg it's common to read sentences like the following in popular science texts: 'ACME produces one quintillion widgets per year, that's a one followed eighteen zeroes.' The second half is basically scientific notation, but written out.
i.e. the milliard was replaced with the US billion.