Billion for dummies

 

I received this post today:

People don't have as strong intuitive sense of  how much bigger 1 billion is than 1 million. 

● A million seconds is about 11 days. 

● A billion seconds is about 32 years. 

This is another way of saying that a billion is about a 1000 times more than a million:

    1 (day) x 365 x 32 = 11680 

    That is 32 years is 11680 times a day.

    Therefore, 11 days is 11680/11  part of 32 years 

    Or, a billion is 1061.8 times a million, or about 1000 times more than a million.

The same would be true if we compare one thousand and one million.

Since a million is a thousand times more than a thousand, the same calculations would hold.

The reason for counting in the West go from one to thousand, to million, to billion... and so on is because three zeroes uniformly come in between. That is:

1 one

1000: thousand

1000000: million

1000000000: billion

It is believed that beyond three zeroes, the human eyes get confused with the number of zeores and we start counting the zeroes with our fingertips after three zeroes. That is why, when we have currency written, we often insert commas after every three zeroes:

1000,000: million

1000,000,000: billion

Now, in the Bharat way of counting, it is not the same: We have laksha (lakh)with five zeroes after and koti (crore) with seven zeroes after.

Although this may not be visually as symmetrical as the Western way of counting, I have noticed that the laksha (lakh) is always a easy way to count. Only, the West keeps calling it hundred thousand instead of lakh.

Your thoughts?