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Geek Culture / Mathematical expressions differences

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Sopo the tocho
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Posted: 3rd May 2009 22:58
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Hi

Im spanish and I always wondered why there are so many differences between the mathematical expressions used in English and the same mathematical expressions in Spanish.

I.E: In English "ONE BILLION" its 1,000,000,000 but in Spanish "UN BILLON" its 1,000,000,000,000 also we use dots intead of comas for big numers and comas for decimals and in English ist the opposite.



Sometimes it can be quite confusing for example: When Obama anounced the 1 trillion dollars budget to solve the economic crisis in the USA I was like -wow!!! 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 dollars!!!- but soon I realized that 1 trillion in English its like 1 billion in Spanish.

Isnt that weird?

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IanM
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Posted: 3rd May 2009 23:58
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Quote: "In English "ONE BILLION" its 1,000,000,000"

Actually, that's US English.

US
Million = 10^6
Billion = 10^9
Trillion = 10^12
Quadrillion = 10^15

UK
Million = 10^6
Billion = 10^12
Trillion = 10^18
Quadrillion = 10^24

However, the US versions are being used more often in the UK and other English-speaking countries too.

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 4th May 2009 00:03
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Hey, this is actually pretty interesting trivia! Thanks for sharing.

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Sopo the tocho
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Posted: 4th May 2009 00:39
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Quote: "
Quote: "In English "ONE BILLION" its 1,000,000,000"
Actually, that's US English.

US
Million = 10^6
Billion = 10^9
Trillion = 10^12
Quadrillion = 10^15

UK
Million = 10^6
Billion = 10^12
Trillion = 10^18
Quadrillion = 10^24

However, the US versions are being used more often in the UK and other English-speaking countries too."


I see, then in the UK its the same as here in Spain, Do you use dots for decimal there like in the USA? or commas like here?

I found this on wikipedia

Quote: "In numbers

Main article: Decimal separator

In representing large numbers, English texts use commas (or spaces) to separate each group of three digits. This is almost always done for numbers of six or more digits, and optionally for five (or even four) digits. (The SI writing style is to use spaces for this purpose.[13]) However, in many other languages (and in South Africa) the comma is used as a decimal separator, equivalent to the decimal point. In addition, the comma may not be used for this purpose at all in some number systems, and a space may be used to separate every three digits instead."


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Tom J
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Posted: 4th May 2009 00:44
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We use dots for decimals in the UK.

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Rudolpho
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Posted: 4th May 2009 14:24
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Billion reads as 10^12 in Sweden as well.
Damn americans with your gallons, inches and whatnot weird measurements

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 4th May 2009 15:27
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Although I'll fight to the death for my right to put the letter "u" in "colour", "armour" etc. (ie. use UK spellings), I actually prefer the American way of counting, since there's a new word for each group of three dots. So you can quite easily count in groups of three: "thousand, million, billion, trillion," without having to worry about whether a thousand billion or a million billion is a trillion.

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 4th May 2009 15:51
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Quote: "Although I'll fight to the death for my right to put the letter "u" in "colour", "armour" etc. (ie. use UK spellings),"


What if it means going to gaol?

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 5th May 2009 18:57
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Then I shall write pages and pages of words in my prison cell, using UK spellings and UK speech marks and spelling things "doughnut" and "aeroplane" and using words like "pavement" and "lorry"!

But I wold stoppe at makyng usage of Chaucer's Englyshe, I thynke. That wold be too muche for moste peple, paraventure.

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Van B
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Posted: 5th May 2009 19:05
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To think all this time I thought people who mix decimals and commas were simply stupid .

So my question is, were those Spaniards just being awkward? - it's the same as those awkward Americans and their date format. In the uk we use dd/mm/yy, lowest to highest, the opposite of time, which is highest to lowest hh:mm:ss. The US use mm/dd/yy, mid to lowest then to highest. There's no logic behind it other than thinking they just wanted to be different.

My solution, they should put the 'U' back in color and we'll say no more.


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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th May 2009 19:08
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Having a different date order is as bad as processors not reading binary numbers the same way (little and big endian I am on about); it's being different for the sake of being different and for nothing more.

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Alsan
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Posted: 5th May 2009 19:08
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I don't want to miss my Milliarde!

One billion is 1.000.000.000.000 (10^12) in Germany as well.

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Sopo the tocho
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Posted: 6th May 2009 09:17
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Quote: "To think all this time I thought people who mix decimals and commas were simply stupid .

So my question is, were those Spaniards just being awkward? - it's the same as those awkward Americans and their date format. In the uk we use dd/mm/yy, lowest to highest, the opposite of time, which is highest to lowest hh:mm:ss. The US use mm/dd/yy, mid to lowest then to highest. There's no logic behind it other than thinking they just wanted to be different."


But we are not the only ones who use commas for the decimals, In fact I belive commas for decimals are used in most European countries.

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Benjamin
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Posted: 6th May 2009 13:34
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Countries_using_Arabic_numerals_with_decimal_point

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