On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, David Honig wrote:
At 08:17 AM 1/8/01 -0500, Ken Brown wrote:
and there are very few opportunities for real misunderstanding. We know
The meaning of 'billion' differs by three orders of magnitude across the pond. That's plenty of room for confusion :-)
And in the US, "billiards" is a game played with cues and balls on a felt-covered slate table. In the UK, it's also a very large number. Thankfully, so large that that definition rarely comes into conversation. As I understand cross-pond conversions, it goes like this.... USA UK Scientific Thousand Thousand 1E3 Million Million 1E6 Billion Milliard 1E9 Trillion Billion 1E12 Quadrillion Billiard 1E15 Quintillion Trillion 1E18 Sextillion Trilliard 1E21 Septillion Quadrillion 1E24 Octillion Quadrilliard 1E27 etc etc etc This silliness seems regular, and has no good reason not to extend indefinitely. But perversely, both dialects use the same word for googols and larger quantities. This is one reason why I tend to just say "screw it" and go to scientific notation when writing. That way it's clear what I mean no matter where the reader is from. Bear