Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 12:48:37 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Mark Ovens <mark@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Useful Metric Conversions Message-ID: <20000317124836.A10194@hades.hell.gr> In-Reply-To: <20000316235012.F248@parish>; from mark@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org on Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 11:50:12PM %2B0000 References: <200003161046.LAA36557@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de>; <20000316130751.I759@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com> <200003162250.OAA28180@ocis.ocis.net> <20000316235012.F248@parish>
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On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 11:50:12PM +0000, Mark Ovens wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 02:49:44PM -0800, Freddie Cash wrote:
> >
> > JOOC, what is the progression in the non-Americas for 10^3 -
> > 10^12?
> >
> > Here in Canada, it's:
> > 10^3 thousand
> > 10^6 million
> > 10^9 billion
> > 10^12 trillion
>
> So Canada subscribes to the US belief in short measure :)
Actually this is closer to the notion of the respective Greek words for
multiples of 1000. For example, 10,000 things are called 'muria'.
Then, 10e+6 things are called 1 ekatomurio where the prefix 'ekato'
means 100 (10e+6 = 100 * 10,000).
After that, what we use is
10,000 = murio | deprecated ancient greek word
10e+6 = ekatommurio | 'ekato' = 100; 100 * 10,000
10e+9 = disekatommurio | 'dis', 'duo' => 2, i.e bi-llion
10e+12 = trisekatommurio | 'tris', 'tria' => 3; i.e. tri-llion
This does not mean that what the US/Canada/Greece uses is the One True
Way(TM) of naming numbers. I'm just trying to throw in an elaborate 'me
too' posting, which someone might find useful, somewhere, sometime.
For those interested in the strange duplication of 'm' in ekatommurio,
it is because 100 in ancient greek was 'ekaton', and the 'n' at the end
of the word somehow got mutated into an 'm' in front of the starting 'm'
in 'murion'.
Well, there you go...
- Giorgos Keramidas
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