What is a trillion anyway?? Who gives a damn?

[aldante]

From Art Cashin….1 trillion dollars. Best explanation I have ever heard.

Numbers like billions and trillions tend to numb the mind. They are too large to grasp in any “real” sense. Thirty years ago an older member of the NYSE (there were some then) gave me a graphic and memorable (at least for me) example. “Young man,” he said, “would you like a million dollars?” “I sure would, sir!”, I replied anxiously. “Then just put aside $ 500 every week for the next 40 years.” I have never forgotten that a million dollars is enough to pay you $ 500 per week for 40 years (and that’s without benefit of interest). To get a billion dollars you would have to set aside $ 500,000 dollars per week for 40 years. And a…..trillion that would require $ 500 million every week for 40 years. Even with these examples, the enormity is difficult to grasp.

I actually did the math on this and instead of 52 weeks, it all works out correctly for 50 weeks but I guess that does not roll off the tounge…

[Anonymous]

It’s true that many don’t understand the difference between a million/billion/trillion.

Some timely examples:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-of-class-warfare—the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over

[svelte]

That video is priceless!

I laughed so hard…thank you Jon Stewart!

[Diego Mamani]

One 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!!

[scaredyclassic]

That clips pretty funny.

I’m bored of trillions. When do we start talking quadrillions?

[briansd1]

Actually, 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

[Anonymous]

Thanks 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!

[NotCranky]

Yes, Brian interesting contribution you make to the discussion.

Here is a nice wiki page on the topic;
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millardo

[sdduuuude]

[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.

[Author]

Posts