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The Oxford English Dictionary comments that googol and googolplex are "not in formal mathematical use". Usage of names of large numbers Some names of large numbers, such as million , billion , and trillion , have real referents in human experience, and are encountered in many contexts, particularly in finance and economics.
Visualization of 1 trillion (short scale) A Rubik's cube, which has about 43 trillion (long scale) possible positions. Trillion is a number with two distinct definitions: 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 10 12 (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both American and British English.
It is universally employed within these countries, and is preferred to the English numbering system. [8] Sri Lanka used this system in the past but has switched to the English numbering system in recent years. In the Maldives, the term lakh is widely used in official documents and local speech.
Two numbers are "within an order of magnitude" of each other if their ratio is between 1/10 and 10. In other words, the two numbers are within about a factor of 10 of each other. [1] For example, 1 and 1.02 are within an order of magnitude. So are 1 and 2, 1 and 9, or 1 and 0.2.
Widespread sounding of the word occurs through the name of the company Google, with the name "Google" being an accidental misspelling of "googol" by the company's founders, [9] which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. [10]
Colloquial English's small vocabulary of empty or indefinite numbers can be employed when there is uncertainty as to the precise number to use, but it is desirable to define a general range: specifically, the terms "umpteen", "umpty", and "zillion". These are derived etymologically from the range affixes:
The number of cells in the human body (estimated at 3.72 × 10 13), or 37.2 trillion/37.2 T [3] The number of bits on a computer hard disk (as of 2024, typically about 10 13, 1–2 TB), or 10 trillion/10T; The number of neuronal connections in the human brain (estimated at 10 14), or 100 trillion/100 T
Each of these words translates to the American English or post-1974 British English word billion (10 9 in the short scale). The term billion originally meant 10 12 when introduced. [7] In long scale countries, milliard was defined to its current value of 10 9, leaving billion at its original 10 12 value and so on for the larger numbers. [7]