Most people can’t handle dealing with million/billion/… numbers, which leads to mistakes like “Elon Musk has 600 billion dollars, he could give every person on Earth a million dollars and still be a billionaire”.

Doing that with scientific notation would be clearer:
600 billion dollars=6e11
divided by 1 million dollars per person (1e6)

(6/1)e(11-6)=6e5=600 000 people Elon can give money to before running out (and that’s if we assume he has that much in cash and not assets and stuff)

  • MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.socialOPEnglish
    0·
    13 days ago

    I can see why, but it’s going to take a lot of time to switch from the decimal system - a hundred years at least.

    Also, I guess I could say powers-of-<base>. We just happen to be using powers of 9+1.