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# Number names/Talk

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Are there any countries besides the US and Canada which use the American definition of "billion"? How about Australia? What about french-Canada? Philippines?

The UK has now adopted the North American billion. I don't know whether the process was formalised, but a billion is nearly always 109 here.

Wow, this is big news, then all the pages about number names are wrong. Are there any references?

Well if you take "The (London) Times" coverage of the last government budget, all the references to billions there are 109 : http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,584-95524,00.html

Similarly, if you read the last official budget statement its clear that they either a) use the US billion or b) This is the richest country ever... (60 million people, 2.5 billion spending increase would be 40,000 GBP per capita, or about twice the average income :)) http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget2001/fsbr/chap1.html

In Australia, these days everyone uses the American billion. -- Simon J Kissane

It makes sense to use the American system because it has finer granularity to be useful in the financial and statistical settings. The British system is probably good to use in astronomy only.

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Last edited August 14, 2001 3:14 pm (diff)
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