Continental Europe is regularly taught both systems as well: the long system is part of the math curriculum, the short system is part of the English curriculum.

The Long Scale does indeed make more logical sense.

The Wikipedia article on Long and Short Scales seem to suggest that most of the English speaking world switched to the Short Scale after the UK made its switch, which is to be expected I guess since many of them are UK colonies/territories, and those that are not probably followed along just to be consistent with the rest.

I have to wonder why the UK switched? Why not leave the US on its own, sort of like the US irritating refusal to adopt Metric.

Meh, I prefer the current, short system. Seems to make more sense to me, who's not a mathematician and is just someone who occasionally needs to say large numbers.

And in the long run, who cares? It's just a name. That bald guy really needs to get over it

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Martin Short is excellent in this!

I guess I prefer the logic of the "long system", although I like the consistency of the short system having a new name for every 3 digits which also coincides with our usage of commas (or periods in some countries). As an American, I had never heard of the long system before, so it would be a struggle to switch to it. I think that at some point, we'd be wise to go ahead and make the switch to metric, maybe switching to the long system would be a good idea also.

Hmm. Never really thought about it before. The english way always made more sense to me, because it's what I was taught so anything else would seem wonky. But this video has changed my mind. I'm a big fan of mathematical elegance and this video has now ruined my interactions with large numbers

I'm willing to accept a billion dollars and then figure out which system they used in retrospect.

Ha, I'm bilingual French/English, and I've been switching between billion and "milliard" (in French) without ever thinking about it. Cool knowledge!

Some number trivia: Japanese counting of large numbers is based on 4 zeros instead of 3. For example, one million is "hyaku man" or "one hundred ten thousands".

>> ^EvilDeathBee:

Meh, I prefer the current, short system. Seems to make more sense to me, who's not a mathematician and is just someone who occasionally needs to say large numbers.

In French we only use the long system and it makes sense to everyone, even to non-mathematicians. What's your point?

>> ^Bidouleroux:

>> ^EvilDeathBee:
Meh, I prefer the current, short system. Seems to make more sense to me, who's not a mathematician and is just someone who occasionally needs to say large numbers.

In French we only use the long system and it makes sense to everyone, even to non-mathematicians. What's your point?


Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I was being perfectly clear. What I was saying; to me, someone who was taught the short system, it is preferred. Also, as someone who doesn't need to use large numbers in every day use I don't need to get pedantic about the name of numbers. No sense in getting your knickers in a twist over a name.

Silly British. Cant even understand the simple short system.

Its based on a thousand (1000), so...
Million ... 1,000 (1) x 1,000 (base) = 1,000,000
Billion ... 1,000 (1) x 1,000 (2) x 1,000 (base) = 1,000,000,000 - so two... bi... over the base 1,000.
Trillion ... 1,000 (1) x 1,000 (2) x 1,000 (3) x 1,000 (base) = 1,000,000,000,000 - so three... tri... over the base 1,000.
etc

Very simple and very consistent. The long system is inconsistent with its naming which is why you have to have the words for the in between numbers in it.

The short way is much better in describing numbers.

Scientists use scientific notation, or "standard notation" as he describes it. Why? Because it's accurate and you don't need a stupid name to describe it. Personally, I'd love to see news papers write 4.5E9 or 4.5x10^9. Why should we take the quantitative comparisons away from these numbers. The difference between a million and a billion is just the letters "m" and "b", where as the difference between 10^6 and 10^9 is of a magnitude of 3.

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