On 9/7/2016 6:45 AM, Chad wrote:
> K is for 000 M is for 000 000
>
Umm, not exactly. In the UK and some of the commonwealth countries, M
is traditionally and colloquially used for thousands, because it's
derived from the Latin numeral for one thousand. Kilo (or K) is the
prefix typically used in more recent scientific notation, taken from
Greek (and initially adopted by the French circa early 19th century as a
means of standardization of measurement, on which the ISO gram-meter
system is based). It's also common in the UK to hear "thousand
million," rather than "billion," probably for the same reason--there
was no Latin equivalent for billion. In Latin numeracy, a million was
the largest denomination, and was represented by an 'M' with a bar over
it, the bar representing "times 1000."
That's roughly the etymology of it as I've been able to gather over the
years.
Cheers.
--
Michael Porter
Roswell, NM
Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....
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