Numbering Systems
Boing Boing links to an article about something I’ve always found rather strange: the difference between American and British numbering systems. They’re both the same up to “million”, but from there they start to diverge. For instance, what Americans call “billions”, the British call “milliards”. The British “billion” is equivalent to the American “trillion”. It gets worse from there.
I’ve never really understood this. I admit to being rather biased (since I am American and I was raised with that system), but the American system simply makes a lot more sense. You don’t have to worry about alternating between “illion” and “illiard”, for one thing. At least the British are starting to use the metric system, though: can’t say the same about us…
Posted Wednesday September 10, 2003 in Interesting by Chris Curtis
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