Talk:Long and short scales

Thousands separators

Somebody needs to change the thousands separators to conform with ISO-Standard. 2001:2043:7C4E:8200:548D:A650:22ED:4ECE (talk) 07:07, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Per wp:DIGITS, e.g. 1,000,000 is fine (as is 1 000 000, or rather 1000000, where the latter is written wit the "gaps" construct). Nø (talk) 18:41, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

History

Why did the short scale start to exist in the first place? 2001:2044:126E:E000:74FE:6A38:D431:9B0C (talk) 13:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Educated guess: To better match with the prefixes of the names. The "bi" in billion sounds like two and the "tri" in trillion sounds like three. So, it makes sense to think of million, billion, trillion as sequential (1, 2, 3). The long scale has the weird -iard guys in there to mess up the sequence. The long scale could make sense if -iard was commonly understood to mean super-sized or something, but it is not a common suffix. Big Maciard. Stevebroshar (talk) 14:29, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Your question begs the question: what motivated the definition/use of the long scale? I'd love to know the answer for both scales. Stevebroshar (talk) 14:37, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Positive n

@Burzuchius Changing the formula from non-negative n to positive n is good. But... Please describe every (non-trivial) change. Why the change. What value it offers.

In this case, positive n does seem easier to understand than non-negative. And it highlights a long scale simplicity: 6n for illions. One might guess that this is why long scale is structured as it is.

Also, I guess my recent change broke the formula for iliard. So, your change fixes that. Thanks for moving the ball forward rather than reverting.

I think there is still work to be done in this space. I'll add separate items below... Stevebroshar (talk) 13:28, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

n-illion

Although I get the point of "n-illion" I think it could be confusing to some. It's not oneillion, twoillion, .... We're expecting the reader to make the leap to million, billion, .... But, maybe we can be more rigorous while also being less mathy. I think it's good to include formulas (math), but to minimize math-speak since it's off-putting to most readers. Stevebroshar (talk) 13:29, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Parts of the words

The recent change from n-iard to n-illiard and addition of n-illion are interesting. Earlier in the article, it says "word ending "-ion" by "-iard"." I wonder what is considered the parts of the words. Which is more correct way to separate the parts?

m-illion, mill-ion, m-ill-ion, mi-llion

b-illion, bill-ion, b-ill-ion, bi-llion

Consider that "bi" and "tri" are a common prefixes in English. I think that indicates that the suffix is not really "illion". Or maybe I'm trying to reverse engineer something that can't/shouldn't be. We can say the words (excluding the intermediate long scale guys) all end in "illion". Of course one can also say they all end in "llion", "lion", "ion", "on" and "n".

One way to handle oddities like this is to avoid the issue. With careful editing, I think the n-suffix terminology can be eliminated. Stevebroshar (talk) 13:34, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Mix of English and international

The article tries to cover the international aspects of a numbering system. Or is it two number systems? Or many? This either covers variations of one thing or covers multiple things that are similar due to a shared history. Ignoring that for now...

The article talks about names of numbers, but all names are presented with no mention that the names are different in other languages -- ignoring the long/short thing. IMO this implies that either the names are the same in each language (which they aren't; for example "billion" in German is "milliarde" ... which is similar to but not exactly "milliard") or that the names given are in English (since this is an English wiki). But, don't all English speakers use the short form? That means they don't use the -illiard forms. That means there are no English -illiard names! So, what is the article talking about?

Maybe English speakers used to use long form. Maybe some did. So, maybe there are antiquated and obsolete -illiard English words. Also, I find that "milliard" is French. So, maybe for long form, the names in the article are French; not English. IDK.

I don't know how to clarify this, but I think it should be. Stevebroshar (talk) 14:29, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Rename

I think the main point of interest for the numbering system (both long and short scales) is that it assigns special significance (yes names) to every third order of magnitude (as well as 1, 10, and 100). Additionally, the names given to these magnitudes are similar across the languages that use the numbering system ... plus additional wonkyness due to the long/short aspect. This article, as titled, is about the long/short wonkyness. But, it actually describes the entirety of the numbering system ... which is not bad since there is no article for the numbering system. This article is IMO about the numbering system in general even though its title indicates it's only about long/short wonkyness.

Consider that this article is about the long and short scales. The scales of what? There is a numbering system that has two scales, right? What is that numbering system? Where is its article? IMO, this article should clearly focus on the numbering system with scale one aspect of it. In fact, I think it already covers the important aspects of the numbering system. But, what is that numbering system called? It doesn't have a name! It's the numbering system we learn as children. No one gives it a name. Do they? So, a problem with focusing on the numbering system is that there's no good name for the article :) :( ... There are articles titled with a non-notable term/phrase: lists, comparisons; even "long and short scales" (never heard of before last week!).

Note that there is Indian numbering system. Using that as a pattern I recommend Latin numbering system. Some other ideas: Standard numbering system, Numbering system (Latin).

So, this article should be renamed to refer to the numbering system. If only it had a name... Stevebroshar (talk) 14:35, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Overly complicated formatting and noise

I have already removed some columns from tables that were overly complicated and contained noise (off topic info).

The history section table is over-tablefication. I plan to de-tablefy it.

IMO the usage section is overly complicated; too clever. It should be restructured to be easier to consume. Stevebroshar (talk) 15:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Tables

• The tables, charts, and graphs need to be restored. They provide an easy understanding as they list the number of "0"s per number. Many people are not familiar with the "10/\16" format.
• Kenixkil (talk) 07:25, 1 January 2025 (UTC)