Re:Google Will Eat Itself
by hessenwolf on Monday March 17, 2014 @11:55AM
(#7415827)
I think I have genuinely never seen scientific notation used in an accouting context. If it can be rounded, then we will use 1MM or 1B.
I see it as follows. Unlike science, where there are a few numbers related in complex ways, accounting has very many numbers, related in very simple ways.
I assume he requires a few more significant figures in his line of work
It's not like scientific notation precludes that. 1.234567E+06 = 1234567, but it's also at a glance obviously around 1 million
wait wait wait, a billion means two different things in Europe and America? I'm from Europe and I always used 1 billion to say 10^9. I hardly see how I would not have noticed figures being so different in say, news articles from America and Britain.
Re:Google Will Eat Itself
by hessenwolf on Monday March 17, 2014 @11:52AM
(#7415805)
When I was growing up in Ireland, a billion was a million million in Britain and Ireland. Now, we have adopted the American thousand million. In Germany and Italy, a thousand million is a Milliard, and a billion is a trillion.
Slovak and Czech have it same as Germany/Italy.
1E+03 = one thousand 1E+06 = one million 1E+09 = a thousand millions / an american billion 1E+12 = an american trillion / an european billion
.. and that's as far as you need; the GDP of most countries is on the order of 1E+12 or 1E+13