Until a few decades ago, the term 'billion' actually meant one million million (1e12) in the UK, rather than the now commonly-accepted meaning of one thousand million (1e9). As a British paper, the FT may simply be trying to avoid the ambiguity.

Pretty common in finance across the board to use consistent units and to not use decimals. So in this case the following sentences mention $10 million, you would not want to say $0.10 billion. It depends on whats being presented of course but in large numbers like these, decimals make it harder to read.

This! Also because people regularly screw up units(forgetting to convert, etc), so if you keep them all the same, it's a touch harder to screw up.

Billion has wildly different meanings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

Prefer "zillion" or "kajillion" to avoid these sorts of pitfalls.

I worked for a FX market maker, and we just used "yards".

Removes any confusion for european and american collaboration.

Got old roots dating back to cockney trading slang: "The Old Lady just bought half a yard of cable"

> the UK has used it since 1974, so let's just assume that FT (an English language paper) is not worried about confusion

Anyone aged around 60 or older would have been learning these numbers before 1974, and that's a significant overlap with FT's audience. You are dismissing this as if it's Middle English. It's an entirely reasonable explanation, at least one that shouldn't be dismissed.

And there was a transition period where younger people need to know that the term could be ambiguous. It's not like they burned all the maths texts in 1974 and replaced them with newer literature. Older text books were probably in use into the 80s and perhaps the 90s.

From the writing of the era, it's clear this new definition for million was not popular, and many chose to continue using the "British meaning." So it was probably in colloquial use for quite a while, and the transitional term "1 thousand million" became the proper style.

Fair point.

>let's just assume that FT (an English language paper) is not worried about confusion

The FT has a big international audience. As a German reader where a "Billion" is still 10^12 it does sometimes trip me up a little. So I at least find it useful.

That's a decent point, but what I don't get is, when I do a Google Translate from English to German for "billion," I get "Milliarde." Is the concern that German readers, reading the article in translation to German, will be confused? It would seem like the German readers reading the English article would understand.

Not trying to argue any point (I mean honestly...), just trying to understand the German POV here, which is interesting.

You may not be aware that it's a false friend. The German word Billion exists, and it means trillion.

So the German reader will read the English article (in English, not auto-translated), see the word billion, think “oh that looks familiar” and might assume it means the same as the German word Billion.

Machine translation makes quite a few mistakes, so I think if you have some decent knowledge of a language, you might be better off reading the original rather than a machine translation. At least my point of view from a couple of years ago. But it's also possible that machine translation has gotten WAY better in the last couple of years, I'm not sure.

Thanks. Interesting.

I disagree, as a native speaker of a language where "bilion" means 10^12, it's clear to me that "billion" means 10^9 when used in English text. So I disagree that is ambiguous. But maybe that's wiem that way to make sure foreigners with poor understanding of English don't read it incorrectly, because I guess it gets confusing (even journalists sometimes make a mistake of translating that wrong).

"Billion" meant 10^12 in England until... some time in the 1950s, I think? But 10^9 in the USA.

So there was confusion, even in the English-speaking world. Was. If I understand correctly, England has adopted 10^9, and so now there is no ambiguity.

Why do we say 17,000 kilometers instead of 17 megameters?

I want us to start using megameters. And gigameters.

And instead of (metric) tons, I want megagrams. No kilotons; gigagrams.

Be the change you want to see.

I remember the first time I got those units out of gnu units on the command line scratching my head wondering why I'd never used them before and why it was using them at the same time.

Brewers introduced me to this with hectolitres

Hectolitres and hectograms are used fairly often (the latter, daily) in Italian, for example.

Hectolitre is 100 litres, not 100ml, but hectogram is 100g, not 100kg? Very confusing!

I mean

    Hecto = 100
    Hectoliter = 100 litres
    Hectogram = 100 grams

    Kilo = 1000
    Kiloliter = 1000 litres
    Kilogram = 1000 grams

It doesn't look that confusing?

Well yeah, litres and grams are the base units. Just because 1ml is 1g of water doesn't change how SI prefixes work.

I would have thought if gram is the base unit for weight then millilitre is the base for volume, but I must be wrong

I’m personally partial to attolightyears (about 1cm).

Surely you'd use the base unit of time, the second (lightseconds)?

atto-lightyear = 1e-18 lightyear

lightyear = 3.156e+7 lightsecond

Hence, atto-lightyear = 3.156e-11 lightsecond = 31.56 pico-lightsecond

That's actually a good question. Why? We have nanometets, picometers, centimeters, decimeters, kilometers, why not megameters?

I wonder why too. Same for weights: why have a ton (1000/kilo kilograms) if you can have a megagram (which is the weight of 1 cubic meter of water at the right conditions)

The only 'commonly' used unit of measure larger than a kilometer is a light year, at least that I can think of. Maybe a Astronomical Unit, but not 'common' I suppose.

I think in terms of things commonly measured on Earth we don't benefit much from the jump to megametres. The diameter of this planet is 12,742 km. Does it help much to say 12.7 megametres? Not really. Off planet the distances between objects are far beyond megametres. AU, parsec, and lightyears make much more sense.

In Sweden, a mile is 10km, not 1.6… so there are other measures that exist, just not in all countries.

The mile is larger than a kilometer.

But it shouldn't be common.

Scientists don't use either. If using SI units, they would say 1.7 x 10^7 m, or 1.7e7 in code, which is even shorter.

In practice, people tend to use units that match the “natural scale” of the data.

If the data consists of electrical potentials between 0.0000001 and 0.0002 V, it’s way easier to think about it as microvolts, especially if any other is in a complementary scale.

Especially in conversation, but calculations are typically done in SI units to avoid mistakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foe_(unit)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit)

Most people prefer habits/conventions over logic.

I've had people get angry when I tried to use Mm (mega metre) or ask why using some currencies symbols before the number when all symbols for all other units are used after.

perhaps we should use kilo-millions?

FT does finance speak. Tranches are in millions more regularly than billions.

Because 179,000 million is a 179 milliard, not 179 billion, which would be 179,000 milliard!