Home › Forums › Financial Markets/Economics › What is a trillion anyway?? Who gives a damn?
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sdduuuude.
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November 29, 2011 at 1:59 PM #19326November 29, 2011 at 2:36 PM #733551
Anonymous
GuestIt’s true that many don’t understand the difference between a million/billion/trillion.
Some timely examples:
November 30, 2011 at 5:37 PM #733587
svelteParticipantThat video is priceless!
I laughed so hard…thank you Jon Stewart!
December 1, 2011 at 2:21 AM #733704Diego Mamani
ParticipantOne easy way to grasp the meaning of billions and trillions is to compute the number of seconds elapsed in X number of years.
A million seconds are about 16700 minutes, or 278 hours, or 11.6 days (all numbers rounded up)
A billion seconds is only 31.7 years
A trillion seconds are 31,688 years. I guess this means that humans have been around for ~7 trillion seconds (assuming the first humans showed up 200 thousand years ago based on the mitochondrial Eve concept).
Since the time of Jesus Christ (assuming it’s a historical figure) a mere 63.5 billion seconds have elapsed!
This shows that a trillion dollars is way too much money and that high inflation in the near future is inevitable. Of course, how high is “high,” is open to speculation.
P.S. It’s 2:00 am, so some of my math may be off. Caveat lector!!
December 1, 2011 at 7:54 AM #733713scaredyclassic
ParticipantThat clips pretty funny.
I’m bored of trillions. When do we start talking quadrillions?
December 1, 2011 at 8:59 AM #733722briansd1
GuestActually, billions and trillions are easy to understand.
Everybody understands what a million is.
A billion is just a thousand millions (or a milliard as the Brits used to day before Americanism took over) and a trillion is a thousand billions. Thousand, million, billion, trillion… they just increase by 1000x.
I don’t like the bi in billion because that implies two and the tri in trillion implies three.
I like milliard for billion because mil implies one thousand.
The origin of billion or (bi-million) is interesting. It makes more sense for a billion to mean a million millions as the French originally coined it.
December 1, 2011 at 9:25 AM #733724GuestThanks Brian, that’s interesting stuff.
I remember when a Brit friend told me that a billion and trillion used to have a different value. I almost didn’t believe him.
From your link:
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the United Kingdom uniformly used the long scale,[3] while the United States of America used the short scale,[3] so that the two systems were often referred to as British and American in the English language. In 1974, the government of the UK switched to the short scale, a change that is reflected in its mass media and official usage.
So if you are reading anything from the UK written prior to 1974, a billion means something else. Confusing!
December 1, 2011 at 9:29 AM #733726NotCranky
ParticipantYes, Brian interesting contribution you make to the discussion.
Here is a nice wiki page on the topic;
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/MillardoDecember 1, 2011 at 9:39 AM #733729sdduuuude
Participant[quote=briansd1]I don’t like the bi in billion because that implies two and the tri in trillion implies three. [/quote]
You have to think like an engineer in groups of 3 orders of magnitude:
1,000 is the 0th level.
1,000,000 is the 1st level.
1,000,000,000 is the 2nd level
1,000,000,000,000 is the 3rd level, etc.
Would probably be cleaner to call 0 – 999 the 0th level and 1,000 the 1st level (million) and 1,000,000 a billion, 1,000,000,000 a trillion.
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