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Million Times Million
Is a million times a million a billion or is it a trillion? For my entire childhood, it was a billion, only for me to grow up and realise, as an adult, that it had better be a trillion! Growing Up With the Long Scale As a child, I stumbled upon an old dictionary lying around our house, and that was where I discovered the names of large numbers. The dictionary used the long scale system, which is based on powers of a million.
As a child, I stumbled upon an old dictionary lying around our house, and that was where I discovered the names of large numbers. Now imagine my disappointment when I left home for university, got access to computers and the World Wide Web, and discovered that the names I had learnt were off by several orders of magnitude compared with what everyone else was using. NumberLong ScaleShort Scale\( 10^6 \)MillionMillion\( 10^9 \)MilliardBillion\( 10^{12} \)BillionTrillion\( 10^{15} \)BilliardQuadrillion\( 10^{18} \)TrillionQuintillion\( 10^{21} \)TrilliardSextillion\( 10^{24} \)QuadrillionSeptillion\( 10^{27} \)QuadrilliardOctillion\( 10^{30} \)QuintillionNonillion\( 10^{33} \)QuintilliardDecillion As the table shows, the two systems agree on the value of a million, but diverge immediately after.
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