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[1] [2] Since the customary, traditional (non-technical) decimal format of large numbers can be lengthy, other systems have been devised that allows for shorter representation. For example, a billion is represented as 13 characters (1,000,000,000) in decimal format, but is only 3 characters (10 9) when expressed in exponential format.
Thus, in France and Italy, some scientists then began using billion to mean 10 9, trillion to mean 10 12, etc. [28] This usage formed the origins of the later short scale. The majority of scientists either continued to say thousand million or changed the meaning of the Pelletier term, milliard, from "million of millions" down to "thousand ...
Traditional British usage assigned new names for each power of one million (the long scale): 1,000,000 = 1 million; 1,000,000 2 = 1 billion; 1,000,000 3 = 1 trillion; and so on. It was adapted from French usage, and is similar to the system that was documented or invented by Chuquet .
million mega- (M) 1 000 000: 10 6: 6 billion giga- (G) 1 000 000 ... the order of magnitude is the number of figures minus one, so it is very easily determined ...
Visualisation of powers of 10 from one to 1 trillion. In mathematics, a power of 10 is any of the integer powers of the number ten; in other words, ten multiplied by itself a certain number of times (when the power is a positive integer).
One billion years may be called an eon in astronomy or geology. Previously in British English (but not in American English), the word "billion" referred exclusively to a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). However, this is not common anymore, and the word has been used to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000) for several decades. [5]
1000 million Mark Notgeld banknote (1923) of Frankfurt am Main. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word billion was formed in the 16th century (from million and the prefix bi-, "two"), meaning the second power of a million (1,000,000 2 = 10 12). This long scale definition was similarly applied to trillion, quadrillion and so on ...
Far larger finite numbers than any of these occur in modern mathematics. For instance, Graham's number is too large to reasonably express using exponentiation or even tetration. For more about modern usage for large numbers, see Large numbers. To handle these numbers, new notations are created and used. There is a large community of ...