How big is a billion? - Numberphile

We discuss millions, billions, trillions and centillions is this film about the long and short scales. We also touch on quadrillions, sextillions, milliards, billiards and the Greek myriad.
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NUMBERPHILE

Videos by Brady Haran

[davidzahalka]

It's great to see how amazed he is by the word "Milliard". Greetings from the continental Europe.

[nickchamp]

I'm Russian and I used to think Americans were crazy for thinking there are 7billion people in the world but now I understand why...

[davesardine]

5:02 - "One is one, that's fine"

Key takeaway from the entire video.

[hauribest]

Anytime I see the word "trillion" in a news article in my country I'm 100% sure it's incorrectly translated from the English short system.

[zkbrhodas]

Always got confused with this, you know, I’m Portuguese and speak Portuguese and we use the long system, but the Brazilians (who also speak Portuguese) use the short system

[theaslam]

I love how the thumbnail asks us if 1, 000, 000, 000 is a billion or a trillion.

But it is just a milliard.

[elkikex]

4:04 "Somebody just got it wrong, and it just, sort of, caught on" - Origin story for half of the things in America.

[ThomasPelk]

"Long System" supporter from Germany ;)

[gryffin]

I always thought until I was "corrected" in Year 8 maths that it was 1 million million = 1 billion 1 billion billion = trillion etc. I call it the longerer system.

[KjV]

I use the "load" system:
1 000  a load
1 000 000  a shit load
1 000 000 000 a fuck load
1 000 000 000 000 a fuck off shit load

This system works best for every day speaking, eg. Premiership footballers earn a shit load of money."  Or: "the national debt of [country] is a fuck off shit load of dollars"

[EmilMacko]

In danish it's:
Million = 1, 000, 000
Milliard = 1, 000, 000, 000
Billion = 1, 000, 000, 000, 000
Billiard = 1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000

[barryholt]

When it gets to the really big numbers, in Ireland there are two camps - eg, "Does the government owe 'a Gazillion' Euros or 'a Gajillion' Euros"..?

[DjVortex-w]

The worst thing is when text is translated from English to a language that uses the long system (such as Finnish.) An inattentive/ignorant translator will make an error of three orders of magnitude when translating "billion".

[filipjirava]

am i the only one who likes to see James' pure joy while talking about milliard?

[mariakhan]

7:59 whoa he quickly number-zoned the long system 😂😂😂

[CM-dxxu]

When English adopted America's system but America still uses imperial.

Top 10 anime betrayals.

[TheNinerion]

I'm German and I noticed this many years ago while watching American news. the German word "Milliarde" corresponds to the American "Billion" and the German "Billion" corresponds to the American "Trillion."   

[ZanxxYami]

In Germny we use the long system. And when u start to have english classes you're going to be heavy confused that people name numbers in such a different way.

[ZeroSk]

Slovakia uses the long system, so i was always confused with Milliard and Billion. Thank you for explaining this.

[HDitzzDH]

In Swedish:
10^0 = ett
10^3 = 1 tusen
10^6 = 1 miljon
10^9 = 1 miljard
10^12 = 1 biljon
10^15 = 1 biljard
10^18 = 1 triljon
10^21 = 1 triljard
etc...