Inflating your collection : 0 Introduction b

When I was referring to Venezuela, although there is a high inflation, the banknotes alwas had 'reasonable' numbers on the notes. From 2 to 100,000 (100 mil) bolívares fuertes, and a second set from 2 to 500 bolívares soberanos
To prevent an endless number of zeros on the notes, the currency devaluated and 5 zeros were skipped. If not, the second set of notes would have gone from 2(00,000) to 500(00,000) or 5 million bolívares.

If a currency does not devaluate, the number of zeros just add up, and there we encounter a second problem. Not because of the mathematical number, but the written number...
Ten and hundred are the same everywhere in the world. So is thousand and a million, but there it stops.
Where the States name "1,000,000,000" a billion, Europeans talk about a "milliard", as for them, a billion is 1,000,000,000,000... thousand times more.
The origine of this difference lies in the fact that some countries use the 'long scale' and some use the 'short scale'. One thing is for sure, the scientific numbering is the same in both scales.

The relationship between the numeric values and the corresponding names in the two scales:
short scale (multiples of thousands)

long scale (multiples of millions)

In the long scale, there is always a step between each "-illions", ending in "-illiard".

Benefit of the short scale : per multiple of thousand, we add up : million, bi-llion, tri-llion ...
Benefit of the long scale : logic billion is million x million, trillion is million x million x million
and the long scale won't run easily out of names either.

example : US trillion = 1,000,000 x 1,000 x 1,000 or 1,000,000,000,000
European trillion = 1,000,000 x 1,000,000 x 1,000,000 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
We will encounter some of those huge numbers in the future posts.

to be continued...