1424: Short and Long Scales Nov 4, 2018

The values of numbers are absolute, but the scales and terminology are not always the same. Largely this is cultural, and is part of the reason that the day, or even geometric circles are divided the way they are. Even with larger numbers there are two scales: the long and short scales. These use a base a base-ten system, so are roughly similar, but the short scale—the more common of the two—uses powers of one thousand (i.e. a 'billion' is a thousand millions) whereas the long scale uses powers of a million. In this scale a 'milliard' is a thousand millions, and a 'billion' is a million millions, so it increases with 'million', 'milliard', 'billion', billiard' etc. This is no longer popular in English, but some languages like German use this system.