I know ONE BILLION is "a lot." But how much really?

March 23, 2018 7:12 PM

When the populations of China and/or India are referred to, it's always "over a billion people." Is there common agreement about whether that is a thousand millions or a million millions? All I find is references to America and Great Britain. What about the French? Or the Chinese, for that matter? This is a number, even if an approximate number. Surely it doesn't change depending on my geographical location.
posted by kestralwing to Science & Nature (17 answers total)

A billion is 10^9. It’s 1000 millions. That’s a mathematical truth that is independent of geography. Is that what you’re asking?
posted by olinerd at 7:17 PM on March 23, 2018 [6 favorites]

The population of china is 1403500365 which is the same in all languages that use arabic numerals.
posted by muddgirl at 7:17 PM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Is this the thing you're talking about? https://blog.harwardcommunications.com/2013/05/21/the-difference-between-milliard-and-billion/ ie, in UK English the word "billion" used to be "a million million"? When we're talking population, we're talking the current thing (ie, 10^9 as above); this is the number that is being referenced. When in a different language, they use whatever the word for that number is in that language.
posted by annabear at 7:21 PM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: More information is on Wikipedia for people who don't know that some countries use a long scale and other countries use a short scale for naming large numbers.
posted by muddgirl at 7:22 PM on March 23, 2018 [19 favorites]

Building on Annabear, 10 to the 9th in French is un milliard.

10 to the 12th in French is un billion.
posted by JimN2TAW at 7:23 PM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: That wikipedia article also has pretty extensive information on the many countries which use completely different number scales.
posted by muddgirl at 7:25 PM on March 23, 2018

This is fascinating. I'd never heard of a billion meaning anything other than 10^9.
posted by Ickster at 7:31 PM on March 23, 2018 [6 favorites]

In Chinese, there's a word for thousand, a word for ten-thousand, a word for hundred-million. But there's no word for million, no word for billion. A million is "one hundred ten-thousands" A billion is "ten hundred-millions".

1,403,500,365 would be "14 hundred-millions, 350 ten-thousands, 365." 十四亿三百五十万三百六十五。
posted by mono blanco at 7:47 PM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

This kind of thing is why they have scientific notation. (1.4 x 10^9)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:17 PM on March 23, 2018

>10⁹
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:30 PM on March 23, 2018

Best answer: The Indian numbering system is also very different, with special words for 10^5 and 10^8, but no special word for 10^6 or 10^9.

Just to be clear, no country has a billion (long scale) people, and that will probably never happen unless we colonize the galaxy or something.
posted by miyabo at 8:46 PM on March 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

I have another datapoint for Britain, having lived here all of my life. In primary school we were taught that a British billion was a historically a million million, but that in practice no-one uses this anymore. In fact, many people aren't even aware that this used to be a thing. It's not really a practical number for everyday conversation: there are no 'million-million'-aires in £ (or $).

In my studies (engineering) we normally use the prefix 'Giga' (10^9) anyway e.g. GPa for gigapascels. The exeption is when we are referring to countable objects rather than units, and then we use the American definition of billion without even thinking.

'Is there common agreement about whether [1 billion people in China/India] is a thousand millions or a million millions?'
Yes, the former.
posted by iplaytheviol at 3:31 AM on March 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

Here's the quote about China's population from the French Wikipedia article:

Avec plus d'un milliard trois-cent millions d'habitants, soit environ un sixième de la population mondiale, elle est le pays le plus peuplé du monde.

"With more than one milliard, three hundred million inhabitants, or about one-sixth of the world population, it is the most populous nation of the world."

As would be expected, they don't use "billion" when talking about the population of China, because "billion" refers to a different number in French.
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:09 AM on March 24, 2018

It's interesting that the UK switched to using the short scale in 1975, the same year that they voted in a UK referendum for membership of the EEC, but almost all the other countries in the EU still use the Long Scale.
posted by Lanark at 9:14 AM on March 24, 2018

Best answer: Perhaps we should all use the metric prefix, so that would make it a Gillion. Somehow the idea of being a Gillionaire seems a little less gauche than being a filthy Billionaire.
posted by Lanark at 9:20 AM on March 24, 2018

I think at this point billion means 10^9 in the English speaking world with no confusion. When people are talking about rich people, companies or national finances these days they're all using billion.

Japanese is like Chinese and numbers are grouped by 10,000s
10 = jui
100 = hyaku
1000 = sen
10000 = man
100000 = ju man
1000000 = hyaku man
10000000 = sen man
100000000 = oku
1000000000 = ju oku
and so on. I don't know what the grouping is after oku but I would imagine that it is pretty commonly used because 1 oku yen is equivalent to about 1 million dollars (1 yen is about 1 cent) so for talking about large amounts of money you'd need the next one after oku.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:34 PM on March 24, 2018

So if reading English written in India, ie newspaper articles, it is absolutely vital to know the terms lakh (=10000) and crore (=10 million or 10000000). Also arab (=1 billion or 10^9), lakh crore (=1 trillion or 10^12), crore crore (=one quadrillion or 10^15) and a bunch more as outlined here.

So the population of India might be written as 134 crore (example here) or e.g. 1.3 arab (mentioned in a comment to this article, which is a nice explanation of the Indian system and how/when it and the English system are used in e.g. daily life vs financial reports and newspaper articles).

My sense is that crore is used ubiquitously while arab is somewhat rare (here is one example). You'll see figures like 134 crore in nearly every article you read, while I had to search pretty hard to find even a few references to arab.
posted by flug at 6:03 AM on March 25, 2018 [1 favorite]