[seqfan] Re: Large English integer names: Mathematica vs. num2words

[Peter Munn]

On Tue, April 25, 2023 12:13 am, Allan Wechsler wrote:
> The point is that *none* of these words is "correct". They are so rare
> that
> there has been almost no social pressure to form a consensus. The "Book of
> Numbers" table was an attempt to form a consensus, but its recommendations
> still have lots of competition and at the moment there is no principled
> way to select from the available options.

Isn't the truth that the consensus is extremely  strongly against thinking
about larger exponents in a skewed version of a mix of ternary and
decimal? Who would think "instead of saying to my new colleague 'ten to
the power sixty-five' I could say 'one hundred vigintillion' ", except
deliberately to perplex?

A widely used system of words for very big numbers will only happen, I
conjecture, based on purely decimal exponents. Note the results of OEIS
searches below.

Best regards,

Peter

Search: trillion -keyword:word
Displaying 1-10 of 66 results found.

Search: quadrillion -keyword:word
Displaying 1-1 of 1 result found.

(quintillion would also get only one hit, A137411, were it not for its
presence in the title of a Kourbatov paper)

Search: decillion -keyword:word
Search: vigintillion -keyword:word
Search: centillion -keyword:word
 all yield:
Sorry, but the terms do not match anything in the table.

*but* ...

Search: googol -keyword:word -"little googol"
Displaying 1-10 of 28 results found.