How many insects?????

[Paul mabbott]

Nice joke - that's what I would say if I were a Finance Minister.
But there is no logic to those names (billion should surely be two millions, trillion should be three millions and so forth.
This seems to be based, sort of?, on the scientific system but with no clarity .. or logic ...

Why are people not taught 'powers of ten' at an early age ... it's a simple enough system ... perhaps not simple enough for the teachers.

Originally Posted by JeffH

I don't think this helps at all but I found it on the web (so it must be true ) and here it is -

Million: 1,000,000
Billion: 1,000,000,000
Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000
Quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
Sextillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Nonillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Centillion: 1 followed by 303 zeros

All this talk of these almost meaningless numbers reminds me of a true story - some years ago the Nicaraguan Finance Minister was being interviewed by a foreign journalist about his country's raging inflation and the level of its foreign debt.

The journalist quantified the debt in US$ quoting some ridiculous figure like $752 trillion and asked the Minister how much that was in his country's own currency - the 'Gold Cordoba'.

After a short pause, his reply was - "all of them"

Jeff