From: "McHatten, Shawn" 
To: atmlist 
Reply-To: "McHatten, Shawn" 


Hi Guys
        Totally off topic gang but I thought this was interesting. We had a
short conversation on the list a while back about different units (metric
vs English, etc). I'm just wondering how many different ways the world
displays numbers regardless of the units of measure they represent.
Especially the Arabic numerals, that much of the western world uses.
        From private conversations with Kartik Patel I got interested in Bombay
(now called Mumbai). While snooping I found that they list large numbers
differently than I am used to. I've found this in other cases too.     Just
wondering how many other ways countries use to do this. Below are some
samples of how to display one hundred and twenty three million, four
hundred and fifty six thousand, seven hundred and eighty nine, point, zero
one two three four five. So far I have:

- in most of English NA 123,456,789.012345
- France and French Canada (Quebec) 123.456.789,012345
- Bombay, India 12,34,56,789.012345

        I'd be interested in hearing what other countries do with Arabic
representation or how other scripts split up their numbers, ie Russian,
Chinese, Japanese. Sorry guys, I don't even know what you use for numbers
:). Does anyone use commas AFTER the decimal place. How do you PRONOUNCE
the India version. Do you still use thousands, millions, billions. If so
what is the rationale behind splitting every two numerals instead of every
three.

The Mumbai official site is:

http://www.mcgm.gov.in/

and their stats page shows that there were:

99,25,891 (As per census 1991)

on: http://www.mcgm.gov.in/Stat%20&%20Fig/Index_Frame.htm


        The 99 million in the city really threw me until I noticed the commas
had been moved and it was really about 10 million. Again sorry for OT.
Thought others might be interested.


Thanks
Shawn

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