Name of all numbers. Big numbers have big names. Ways to build names of large numbers

In the names of Arabic numbers, each digit belongs to its category, and every three digits form a class. Thus, the last digit in a number indicates the number of units in it and is called, accordingly, the place of units. The next, second from the end, digit indicates tens (the tens digit), and the third digit from the end indicates the number of hundreds in the number - the hundreds digit. Further, the digits are repeated in the same way in turn in each class, denoting units, tens and hundreds in the classes of thousands, millions, and so on. If the number is small and does not contain a tens or hundreds digit, it is customary to take them as zero. Classes group numbers in numbers of three, often in computing devices or records a period or space is placed between classes to visually separate them. This is done to make it easier to read large numbers. Each class has its own name: the first three digits are the class of units, followed by the class of thousands, then millions, billions (or billions), and so on.

Since we use the decimal system, the basic unit of quantity is the ten, or 10 1 . Accordingly, with an increase in the number of digits in a number, the number of tens of 10 2, 10 3, 10 4, etc. also increases. Knowing the number of tens, you can easily determine the class and category of the number, for example, 10 16 is tens of quadrillions, and 3 × 10 16 is three tens of quadrillions. The decomposition of numbers into decimal components occurs as follows - each digit is displayed in a separate term, multiplied by the required coefficient 10 n, where n is the position of the digit in the count from left to right.
For example: 253 981=2×10 6 +5×10 5 +3×10 4 +9×10 3 +8×10 2 +1×10 1

Also, the power of 10 is also used in writing decimals: 10 (-1) is 0.1 or one tenth. Similarly with the previous paragraph, a decimal number can also be decomposed, in which case n will indicate the position of the digit from the comma from right to left, for example: 0.347629= 3x10 (-1) +4x10 (-2) +7x10 (-3) +6x10 (-4) +2x10 (-5) +9x10 (-6) )

Names of decimal numbers. Decimal numbers are read by the last digit after the decimal point, for example 0.325 - three hundred and twenty-five thousandths, where thousandths are the digit of the last digit 5.

Table of names of large numbers, digits and classes

Many are interested in questions about how large numbers are called and what number is the largest in the world. These interesting questions will be dealt with in this article.

History

The southern and eastern Slavic peoples used alphabetic numbering to write numbers, and only those letters that are in the Greek alphabet. Above the letter, which denoted the number, they put a special “titlo” icon. The numerical values ​​of the letters increased in the same order in which the letters followed in the Greek alphabet (in the Slavic alphabet, the order of the letters was slightly different). In Russia, Slavic numbering was preserved until the end of the 17th century, and under Peter I they switched to “Arabic numbering”, which we still use today.

The names of the numbers also changed. So, until the 15th century, the number “twenty” was designated as “two ten” (two tens), and then it was reduced for faster pronunciation. The number 40 until the 15th century was called “fourty”, then it was replaced by the word “forty”, which originally denoted a bag containing 40 squirrel or sable skins. The name "million" appeared in Italy in 1500. It was formed by adding an augmentative suffix to the number "mille" (thousand). Later, this name came to Russian.

In the old (XVIII century) "Arithmetic" of Magnitsky, there is a table of names of numbers, brought to the "quadrillion" (10 ^ 24, according to the system through 6 digits). Perelman Ya.I. in the book "Entertaining Arithmetic" the names of large numbers of that time are given, somewhat different from today: septillion (10 ^ 42), octalion (10 ^ 48), nonalion (10 ^ 54), decalion (10 ^ 60), endecalion (10 ^ 66), dodecalion (10 ^ 72) and it is written that "there are no further names."

Ways to build names of large numbers

There are 2 main ways to name large numbers:

• American system, which is used in the USA, Russia, France, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Brazil. The names of large numbers are built quite simply: at the beginning there is a Latin ordinal number, and the suffix “-million” is added to it at the end. The exception is the number "million", which is the name of the number one thousand (mille) and the magnifying suffix "-million". The number of zeros in a number that is written in the American system can be found by the formula: 3x + 3, where x is a Latin ordinal number
• English system most common in the world, it is used in Germany, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Portugal. The names of numbers according to this system are built as follows: the suffix “-million” is added to the Latin numeral, the next number (1000 times larger) is the same Latin numeral, but the suffix “-billion” is added. The number of zeros in a number that is written in the English system and ends with the suffix “-million” can be found by the formula: 6x + 3, where x is a Latin ordinal number. The number of zeros in numbers ending in the suffix “-billion” can be found by the formula: 6x + 6, where x is a Latin ordinal number.

From the English system, only the word billion passed into the Russian language, which is still more correct to call it the way the Americans call it - billion (since the American system for naming numbers is used in Russian).

In addition to numbers that are written in the American or English system using Latin prefixes, non-systemic numbers are known that have their own names without Latin prefixes.

Proper names for large numbers

• Vigintillion (from lat. viginti - twenty) - 10 63
• Centillion (from Latin centum - one hundred) - 10 303
• Milleillion (from Latin mille - thousand) - 10 3003

For numbers greater than a thousand, the Romans did not have their own names (all the names of numbers below were composite).

Compound names for large numbers

In addition to their own names, for numbers greater than 10 33 you can get compound names by combining prefixes.

Compound names for large numbers

• 10 123 - quadragintillion
• 10 153 - quinquagintillion
• 10 183 - sexagintillion
• 10 213 - septuagintillion
• 10 243 - octogintillion
• 10 273 - nonagintillion
• 10 303 - centillion

Further names can be obtained by direct or reverse order of Latin numerals (it is not known how to correctly):

• 10 306 - ancentillion or centunillion
• 10 309 - duocentillion or centduollion
• 10 312 - trecentillion or centtrillion
• 10 315 - quattorcentillion or centquadrillion
• 10 402 - tretrigintacentillion or centtretrigintillion

The second spelling is more in line with the construction of numerals in Latin and avoids ambiguities (for example, in the number trecentillion, which in the first spelling is both 10903 and 10312).

• 10 603 - decentillion
• 10 903 - trecentillion
• 10 1203 - quadringentillion
• 10 1503 - quingentillion
• 10 1803 - sescentillion
• 10 2103 - septingentillion
• 10 2403 - octingentillion
• 10 2703 - nongentillion
• 10 3003 - million
• 10 6003 - duomillion
• 10 9003 - tremillion
• 10 15003 - quinquemillion
• 10 308760 -ion
• 10 3000003 - miamimiliaillion
• 10 6000003 - duomyamimiliaillion

myriad– 10,000. The name is obsolete and practically never used. However, the word “myriad” is widely used, which means not a certain number, but an uncountable, uncountable set of something.

googol ( English . googol) — 10 100 . The American mathematician Edward Kasner first wrote about this number in 1938 in the journal Scripta Mathematica in the article “New Names in Mathematics”. According to him, his 9-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta suggested calling the number this way. This number became public knowledge thanks to the Google search engine, named after him.

Asankheyya(from Chinese asentzi - innumerable) - 10 1 4 0. This number is found in the famous Buddhist treatise Jaina Sutra (100 BC). It is believed that this number is equal to the number of cosmic cycles required to gain nirvana.

Googolplex ( English . Googolplex) — 10^10^100. This number was also invented by Edward Kasner and his nephew, it means one with a googol of zeros.

Skewes number (Skewes' number Sk 1) means e to the power of e to the power of e to the power of 79, i.e. e^e^e^79. This number was proposed by Skewes in 1933 (Skewes. J. London Math. Soc. 8, 277-283, 1933.) in proving the Riemann conjecture concerning prime numbers. Later, Riele (te Riele, HJJ "On the Sign of the Difference P(x)-Li(x"). Math. Comput. 48, 323-328, 1987) reduced Skuse's number to e^e^27/4, which is approximately equal to 8.185 10^370. However, this number is not an integer, so it is not included in the table of large numbers.

Second Skewes Number (Sk2) equals 10^10^10^10^3, which is 10^10^10^1000. This number was introduced by J. Skuse in the same article to denote the number up to which the Riemann hypothesis is valid.

For super-large numbers, it is inconvenient to use powers, so there are several ways to write numbers - the notations of Knuth, Conway, Steinhouse, etc.

Hugo Steinhaus suggested writing large numbers inside geometric shapes (triangle, square and circle).

The mathematician Leo Moser finalized Steinhaus's notation, suggesting that after the squares, draw not circles, but pentagons, then hexagons, and so on. Moser also proposed a formal notation for these polygons, so that the numbers could be written without drawing complex patterns.

Steinhouse came up with two new super-large numbers: Mega and Megiston. In Moser notation, they are written as follows: Mega – 2, Megiston– 10. Leo Moser suggested also calling a polygon with the number of sides equal to mega – megagon, and also suggested the number "2 in Megagon" - 2. The last number is known as Moser's number or just like Moser.

There are numbers bigger than Moser. The largest number that has been used in a mathematical proof is number Graham(Graham's number). It was first used in 1977 in the proof of one estimate in the Ramsey theory. This number is associated with bichromatic hypercubes and cannot be expressed without a special 64-level system of special mathematical symbols introduced by Knuth in 1976. Donald Knuth (who wrote The Art of Programming and created the TeX editor) came up with the concept of superpower, which he proposed to write with arrows pointing up:

In general

Graham suggested G-numbers:

The number G 63 is called the Graham number, often simply referred to as G. This number is the largest known number in the world and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

Have you ever wondered how many zeros there are in one million? This is a pretty simple question. What about a billion or a trillion? One followed by nine zeros (1000000000) - what is the name of the number?

A short list of numbers and their quantitative designation

• Ten (1 zero).
• One hundred (2 zeros).
• Thousand (3 zeros).
• Ten thousand (4 zeros).
• One hundred thousand (5 zeros).
• Million (6 zeros).
• Billion (9 zeros).
• Trillion (12 zeros).
• Quadrillion (15 zeros).
• Quintillion (18 zeros).
• Sextillion (21 zeros).
• Septillion (24 zeros).
• Octalion (27 zeros).
• Nonalion (30 zeros).
• Decalion (33 zeros).

Grouping zeros

1000000000 - what is the name of the number that has 9 zeros? It's a billion. For convenience, large numbers are grouped into three sets, separated from each other by a space or punctuation marks such as a comma or period.

This is done to make it easier to read and understand the quantitative value. For example, what is the name of the number 1000000000? In this form, it is worth a little naprechis, count. And if you write 1,000,000,000, then immediately the task becomes easier visually, so you need to count not zeros, but triples of zeros.

Numbers with too many zeros

Of the most popular are million and billion (1000000000). What is a number with 100 zeros called? This is the googol number, also called by Milton Sirotta. That's a wildly huge number. Do you think this is a big number? Then what about a googolplex, a one followed by a googol of zeros? This figure is so large that it is difficult to come up with a meaning for it. In fact, there is no need for such giants, except to count the number of atoms in the infinite Universe.

Is 1 billion a lot?

There are two scales of measurement - short and long. Worldwide in science and finance, 1 billion is 1,000 million. This is on a short scale. According to her, this is a number with 9 zeros.

There is also a long scale, which is used in some European countries, including France, and was formerly used in the UK (until 1971), where a billion was 1 million million, that is, one and 12 zeros. This gradation is also called the long-term scale. The short scale is now predominant in financial and scientific matters.

Some European languages ​​such as Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, German use a billion (or a billion) characters in this system. In Russian, a number with 9 zeros is also described for a short scale of a thousand million, and a trillion is a million million. This avoids unnecessary confusion.

Conversational options

In Russian colloquial speech after the events of 1917 - the Great October Revolution - and the period of hyperinflation in the early 1920s. 1 billion rubles was called "limard". And in the dashing 1990s, a new slang expression “watermelon” appeared for a billion, a million was called a “lemon”.

The word "billion" is now used internationally. This is a natural number, which is displayed in the decimal system as 10 9 (one and 9 zeros). There is also another name - a billion, which is not used in Russia and the CIS countries.

Billion = billion?

Such a word as a billion is used to denote a billion only in those states in which the "short scale" is taken as the basis. These countries are the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the USA, Canada, Greece and Turkey. In other countries, the concept of a billion means the number 10 12, that is, one and 12 zeros. In countries with a "short scale", including Russia, this figure corresponds to 1 trillion.

Such confusion appeared in France at a time when the formation of such a science as algebra was taking place. The billion originally had 12 zeros. However, everything changed after the appearance of the main manual on arithmetic (author Tranchan) in 1558), where a billion is already a number with 9 zeros (a thousand million).

For several subsequent centuries, these two concepts were used on a par with each other. In the middle of the 20th century, namely in 1948, France switched to a long scale system of numerical names. In this regard, the short scale, once borrowed from the French, is still different from the one they use today.

Historically, the United Kingdom has used the long-term billion, but since 1974 UK official statistics have used the short-term scale. Since the 1950s, the short-term scale has been increasingly used in the fields of technical writing and journalism, even though the long-term scale was still maintained.

“I see clumps of vague numbers lurking out there in the dark, behind the little spot of light that the mind candle gives. They whisper to each other; talking about who knows what. Perhaps they do not like us very much for capturing their little brothers with our minds. Or maybe they just lead an unambiguous numerical way of life, out there, beyond our understanding.''
Douglas Ray

We continue ours. Today we have numbers...

Sooner or later, everyone is tormented by the question, what is the largest number. A child's question can be answered in a million. What's next? Trillion. And even further? In fact, the answer to the question of what are the largest numbers is simple. It is simply worth adding one to the largest number, as it will no longer be the largest. This procedure can be continued indefinitely.

But if you ask yourself: what is the largest number that exists, and what is its own name?

Now we all know...

There are two systems for naming numbers - American and English.

The American system is built quite simply. All names of large numbers are built like this: at the beginning there is a Latin ordinal number, and at the end the suffix -million is added to it. The exception is the name "million" which is the name of the number one thousand (lat. mille) and the magnifying suffix -million (see table). So the numbers are obtained - trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion and decillion. The American system is used in the USA, Canada, France and Russia. You can find out the number of zeros in a number written in the American system using the simple formula 3 x + 3 (where x is a Latin numeral).

The English naming system is the most common in the world. It is used, for example, in Great Britain and Spain, as well as in most of the former English and Spanish colonies. The names of numbers in this system are built like this: like this: a suffix -million is added to the Latin numeral, the next number (1000 times larger) is built according to the principle - the same Latin numeral, but the suffix is ​​-billion. That is, after a trillion in the English system comes a trillion, and only then a quadrillion, followed by a quadrillion, and so on. Thus, a quadrillion according to the English and American systems are completely different numbers! You can find out the number of zeros in a number written in the English system and ending with the suffix -million using the formula 6 x + 3 (where x is a Latin numeral) and using the formula 6 x + 6 for numbers ending in -billion.

Only the number billion (10 9 ) passed from the English system into the Russian language, which, nevertheless, would be more correct to call it the way the Americans call it - a billion, since we have adopted the American system. But who in our country does something according to the rules! ;-) By the way, sometimes the word trillion is also used in Russian (you can see for yourself by running a search in Google or Yandex) and it means, apparently, 1000 trillion, i.e. quadrillion.

In addition to numbers written using Latin prefixes in the American or English system, the so-called off-system numbers are also known, i.e. numbers that have their own names without any Latin prefixes. There are several such numbers, but I will talk about them in more detail a little later.

Let's go back to writing using Latin numerals. It would seem that they can write numbers to infinity, but this is not entirely true. Now I will explain why. Let's first see how the numbers from 1 to 10 33 are called:

And so, now the question arises, what next. What is a decillion? In principle, it is possible, of course, by combining prefixes to generate such monsters as: andecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion, quattordecillion, quindecillion, sexdecillion, septemdecillion, octodecillion and novemdecillion, but these will already be compound names, and we were interested in our own names numbers. Therefore, according to this system, in addition to those indicated above, you can still get only three - vigintillion (from lat.viginti- twenty), centillion (from lat.percent- one hundred) and a million (from lat.mille- one thousand). The Romans did not have more than a thousand proper names for numbers (all numbers over a thousand were composite). For example, a million (1,000,000) Romans calledcentena miliai.e. ten hundred thousand. And now, actually, the table:

Thus, according to a similar system, numbers are greater than 10 3003 , which would have its own, non-compound name, it is impossible to get! But nevertheless, numbers greater than a million are known - these are the very non-systemic numbers. Finally, let's talk about them.

The smallest such number is a myriad (it is even in Dahl's dictionary), which means a hundred hundreds, that is, 10,000. True, this word is outdated and practically not used, but it is curious that the word "myriad" is widely used, which does not mean a certain number at all, but an uncountable, uncountable set of something. It is believed that the word myriad (English myriad) came to European languages ​​from ancient Egypt.

There are different opinions about the origin of this number. Some believe that it originated in Egypt, while others believe that it was born only in Ancient Greece. Be that as it may, in fact, the myriad gained fame precisely thanks to the Greeks. Myriad was the name for 10,000, and there were no names for numbers over ten thousand. However, in the note "Psammit" (i.e., the calculus of sand), Archimedes showed how one can systematically build and name arbitrarily large numbers. In particular, placing 10,000 (myriad) grains of sand in a poppy seed, he finds that in the Universe (a ball with a diameter of a myriad of Earth diameters) would fit (in our notation) no more than 10 63 grains of sand. It is curious that modern calculations of the number of atoms in the visible universe lead to the number 10 67 (only a myriad of times more). The names of the numbers Archimedes suggested are as follows:
1 myriad = 10 4 .
1 di-myriad = myriad myriad = 10 8 .
1 tri-myriad = di-myriad di-myriad = 10 16 .
1 tetra-myriad = three-myriad three-myriad = 10 32 .
etc.

Googol (from the English googol) is the number ten to the hundredth power, that is, one with one hundred zeros. The "googol" was first written about in 1938 in the article "New Names in Mathematics" in the January issue of the journal Scripta Mathematica by the American mathematician Edward Kasner. According to him, his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta suggested calling a large number "googol". This number became well-known thanks to the search engine named after him. Google. Note that "Google" is a trademark and googol is a number.

Edward Kasner.

On the Internet, you can often find mention that - but this is not so ...

In the well-known Buddhist treatise Jaina Sutra, dating back to 100 BC, the number Asankheya (from the Chinese. asentzi- incalculable), equal to 10 140. It is believed that this number is equal to the number of cosmic cycles required to gain nirvana.

Googolplex (English) googolplex) - a number also invented by Kasner with his nephew and meaning one with a googol of zeros, that is, 10 10100 . Here is how Kasner himself describes this "discovery":

Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner"s nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have a name. a googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out.

Mathematics and the Imagination(1940) by Kasner and James R. Newman.

Even larger than the googolplex number, Skewes' number was proposed by Skewes in 1933 (Skewes. J. London Math. soc. 8, 277-283, 1933.) in proving the Riemann conjecture concerning primes. It means e to the extent e to the extent e to the power of 79, i.e. ee e 79 . Later, Riele (te Riele, H. J. J. "On the Sign of the Difference P(x)-Li(x)." Math. Comput. 48, 323-328, 1987) reduced Skuse's number to ee 27/4 , which is approximately equal to 8.185 10 370 . It is clear that since the value of the Skewes number depends on the number e, then it is not an integer, so we will not consider it, otherwise we would have to recall other non-natural numbers - the number pi, the number e, etc.

But it should be noted that there is a second Skewes number, which in mathematics is denoted as Sk2 , which is even larger than the first Skewes number (Sk1 ). Skuse's second number, was introduced by J. Skuse in the same article to denote a number for which the Riemann hypothesis is not valid. Sk2 is 1010 10103 , i.e. 1010 101000 .

As you understand, the more degrees there are, the more difficult it is to understand which of the numbers is greater. For example, looking at the Skewes numbers, without special calculations, it is almost impossible to understand which of these two numbers is larger. Thus, for superlarge numbers, it becomes inconvenient to use powers. Moreover, you can come up with such numbers (and they have already been invented) when the degrees of degrees simply do not fit on the page. Yes, what a page! They won't even fit into a book the size of the entire universe! In this case, the question arises how to write them down. The problem, as you understand, is solvable, and mathematicians have developed several principles for writing such numbers. True, every mathematician who asked this problem came up with his own way of writing, which led to the existence of several, unrelated, ways to write numbers - these are the notations of Knuth, Conway, Steinhaus, etc.

Consider the notation of Hugo Stenhaus (H. Steinhaus. Mathematical Snapshots, 3rd edn. 1983), which is quite simple. Steinhouse suggested writing large numbers inside geometric shapes - a triangle, a square and a circle:

Steinhouse came up with two new super-large numbers. He called the number - Mega, and the number - Megiston.

The mathematician Leo Moser refined Stenhouse's notation, which was limited by the fact that if it was necessary to write numbers much larger than a megiston, difficulties and inconveniences arose, since many circles had to be drawn one inside the other. Moser suggested drawing not circles after squares, but pentagons, then hexagons, and so on. He also proposed a formal notation for these polygons, so that numbers could be written without drawing complex patterns. Moser notation looks like this:

Thus, according to Moser's notation, Steinhouse's mega is written as 2, and megiston as 10. In addition, Leo Moser suggested calling a polygon with the number of sides equal to mega - megagon. And he proposed the number "2 in Megagon", that is, 2. This number became known as Moser's number or simply as moser.

But the moser is not the largest number. The largest number ever used in a mathematical proof is the limiting value known as Graham's number, first used in 1977 in the proof of one estimate in Ramsey theory. It is associated with bichromatic hypercubes and cannot be expressed without the special 64-level system of special mathematical symbols introduced by Knuth in 1976.

Unfortunately, the number written in the Knuth notation cannot be translated into the Moser notation. Therefore, this system will also have to be explained. In principle, there is nothing complicated in it either. Donald Knuth (yes, yes, this is the same Knuth who wrote The Art of Programming and created the TeX editor) came up with the concept of superpower, which he proposed to write with arrows pointing up:

In general, it looks like this:

I think that everything is clear, so let's get back to Graham's number. Graham proposed the so-called G-numbers:

1. G1 = 3..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is 33.


2. G2 = ..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is equal to G1 .


3. G3 = ..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is equal to G2 .



4. G63 = ..3, where the number of superpower arrows is G62 .

The number G63 became known as the Graham number (it is often denoted simply as G). This number is the largest known number in the world and is even listed in the Guinness Book of Records. And here