At the best of times, numbers are confusing. Not as in “I can’t do math” confusing, but as in keeping track of them. Every week, I try to read the news in different languages, just to keep me on my toes, and to keep the rhythm of the languages I read or speak in my head. Every time I travel across languages (the only travel I’m doing these days), my brain has to do a back flip to keep up. For example, in English, you say “81” as you write it: eighty-one. In Afrikaans and Dutch, you say “een-en-tagtig” (one and eighty); in French, you say “quatre-vingt-un” (four twenties and one); and so on.
So much for the everyday numbers. Where I get stuck is the really big numbers.
Once you get to the really large numbers, the world loses its mind. For whole numbers smaller than 1,000,000,000 (10 to the power of 9), such as one thousand or one million, most places are in agreement. But when it comes to larger numbers, starting with 10 to the power of 9, there are two systems: the “long scale” and the “short scale”. The long scale proceeds by powers of one million, whereas the short scale proceeds by powers of one thousand.
For example, one billion is a thousand millions (1,000,000,000, or 10 to the power of 9) on the short scale. In the long scale, a billion means one million millions (10 to the power of 12). In the short scale, one trillion is one thousand billions (10 to the power of 12). In the long scale, a trillion means one million billions (10 to the power of 18).
Not confusing at all.
Now, in some languages, the long scale introduces new names for the interleaving multipliers, replacing the ending -ion with -iard; for example, the next multiplier after million is milliard, after billion it is billiard.
Broadly, English-speaking countries use the short scale; European countries use the long scale. Some, like Canada and South Africa, use both (short scale for English; long scale for French and Afrikaans). So when you travel across languages, you have to keep swapping notation forms.
I’ve been editing a collection of essays that uses big numbers. The authors have quoted statistics from Afrikaans, Dutch, and French, so I have spent my days doing arithmetic acrobatics. And then, this morning, I hit the triple salto of intercultural math: an article about the Indian Premier League cricket.
My Indian friends are already laughing, I suspect. They know where this is going. If you thought bouncing between longs scales and short scales was confusing, try negotiating Indian numbering systems. Here’s an example: “The government is planning an additional Rs 1.5 lakh crore of stimulus.” How much of this will be invested in cricket?
Let me try to help you out of this pretzel. The Indian numbering is the same as western numbering systems up to 10 to the power of 4 (10,000). But then it gets weird. Ten to the power of 5 (100,000) is one lakh. Except, it is written as 1,00,000 (the decimals are in different places); ten to the power of 6 = one crore (10,000,000; except that India writes this as 1,00,00,000).
I’m not even going to try to convert 1.5 lahk crore, but I can tell you that one lahk crore is roughly US$15 billion. You can do the math.
Like I said, numbers are confusing. Next time, we’ll tackle arabs and kharabs and padma.