Sender: crough45 AT amc DOT de
Message-Id: <97Jun4.141151gmt+0100.16652@internet01.amc.de>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 13:15:27 +0100
From: Chris Croughton <crough45 AT amc DOT de>
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To: mert0407 AT sable DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Random numbers
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George Foot wrote:

> Paul Derbyshire (ao950 AT FreeNet DOT Carleton DOT CA) wrote:
>
> : Also, there's a name for a thousand million, "billion", which is somewhat
> : less long and awkward :)
>
> Fair enough, but note that in America a billion is 10^9 whereas (certainly
> in the past) in Britain it is/was 10^12, which is more logical IMHO. I
> tend to write `thousand million' to remove any ambiguity. I think now
> `Britain' may sadly have changed to fit the American definition, which I
> feel is less logical; but we shouldn't be dealing with units of 10^3
> anyway...

You're partially right twice <g>.  The 'correct' British definition
of 'billion' is indeed 10^12, but most of the newspapers have gone over
to the American definition (I believe even the BBC may have done so).
However, it is definitely ambiguous still because a lot of older people
(I include myself) still by default assume a billion is 10^12.

There is/was a term for 10^9 - milliard.  As far as I know it's not in 
use in Britain now at all, but it does still exist and is used in German
(I assume that's where it entered the English language).

Incidentally, why do you say that the old British definition is "more
logical"?  I agree with you that it's better, but that's at least
partly prejudice on my part, I'm not aware of any logical basis for
preferring it.

Re: your 'ideal' function - that's about what I've come up with as
well, but it does tend to be rather slower.  However, without an
infinite number of bits any other method does suffer from rounding
and 'edge condition' errors with moduli which aren't powers of 2.

Chris