million, billion, trillion... then what?

[Dinosaur]

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.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

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.

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.

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!

 

[Mathers2013]

Million Billion Trillion...

 

[Pete]

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

(Fifteen!)

 

[sculptor]

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

(Fifteen!)

necromancy = communicating with the dead to predict the future?
ok
if they could predict the future would they be dead?

 

[TheFrogger]

Or, Dinosaur, ×10^3 3 being the number of zeros after said digits.

 

[TheFrogger]

...Or is ×10^3 10 100 10,000?

 

[James R]

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