A quick Monday maths refresher from Johnny Ball as he explains to the viewers of BBC news how to talk about, and write, large numbers.
Followers of the banking and economic crises will now be well-acquainted with the kind of eye-wateringly large sums of money being lost, earned or moved around in the US and European economies. But there is no harm reminding onself what goes into a very large number, and how you might write it down.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7917357.stm
I’ll dispute his gripe that the Americans ruined our nice system of writing a million million as a billion with their (altogether more sensible) method of multiplying by a thousand. It still doesn’t make a billion any easier to grasp for this tiny brain, but at least the American – and scientific – approach gives us more and more exotic terms to describe financial meltdown. Bring on the quadrillion!
Key Stage 3 Maths-Whizzers will be well on the way to Johnny Ball-esque skills with powers. Whether some of our banking experts ought to be sent back to the School For Large Numbers in order (if nothing else) to help them get to grips with just how much money has been sent swirling down the monetary plughole I leave to others to decide.