million, billion, trillion... then what?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by qfrontier, Aug 14, 2002.

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  1. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I have not read every post to this thread. My apologies if the following has already been posted.

    It is a shame that the average person does not use (& prehaps does not understand) exponential notation.

    It is much easier to write 10[sup]9[/sup], 10[sup]10[/sup], et cetera than to keep track of the verbal equivalents.
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    That's not so convenient in speech. Are we going to call Warren Buffet a ten-to-the-ninth-aire? That the radius of the universe is ten-to-the eleventh light-years? Or better yet, six times ten to the twenty-first miles? If I got any of those wrong, it sorta proves my point.

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    Not to mention, the verbal morphemes (both the scientific prefixes like giga- and the vernacular prefixes like quint-) group them by powers of 1000, rather than ten. This is conceptually easier to deal with.

    As for exponential notation, I don't think the average person even understands exponentiation!
     
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  5. Mathers2013 Banned Banned

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    Million Billion Trillion...
     
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  7. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    Does anyone else ever feel the urge to cast necromancy when you don't have any corpses handy?

    (Fifteen!)
     
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  8. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    necromancy = communicating with the dead to predict the future?
    ok
    if they could predict the future would they be dead?
     
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  9. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Or, Dinosaur, ×10^3 3 being the number of zeros after said digits.
     
  10. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    ...Or is ×10^3 10 100 10,000?
     
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    I think the question in the opening post has been answered. Time to close the thread.
     
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