Some Big Numbers

December 13, 2006 11:57 AM

Millionsand Millions (Last pixel sold on Sun, 1 Jan 2006) and Millions _(previously) and millions _(previously) and Billions and Billions. How many millions How many Billions? Trillion _(previously). and remember when Google was just a huge number? A Bajillion? And of course a Brazillian.
posted by Monkey0nCrack (24 comments total)

Google was never a huge number. Googol is still a huge number.
posted by oddman at 12:04 PM on December 13, 2006

Novemdecillion and the old standby: "If you had an umpteen-centrifugillion, impossibidillion-fantasticatrillion dollars and sixteen cents, what would you do with it all?
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:09 PM on December 13, 2006

The last link makes the post. thanks :)
posted by rubin at 12:17 PM on December 13, 2006

Google was never a huge number. Googol is still a huge number.

Ironically, because two computer/information scientists couldn't remember how to spell googol. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

(This post was spellchecked in gmail, 'cause I was trying to slip an a into necessity and I knew I shouldn't.)
posted by loquacious at 12:18 PM on December 13, 2006

Snork snork snork on that last one!
posted by etoile at 12:21 PM on December 13, 2006

42













Dickheads!
posted by Mister_A at 12:21 PM on December 13, 2006

Be gentle - it's my first post.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 12:30 PM on December 13, 2006

What does one have to do to "discover" a number?

Can I just do a 1 followed by X number of zeros and then say I discover a diosillion?
posted by dios at 12:30 PM on December 13, 2006

Mmmm. Did somebody say pie?
posted by jefbla at 12:35 PM on December 13, 2006

loquacious: "Ironically, because two computer/information scientists couldn't remember how to spell googol. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention."

If only they'd had a decent search engine available, they could have asked the web how to spell it.
posted by Plutor at 12:47 PM on December 13, 2006

Did you mean: googol
posted by yeti at 12:54 PM on December 13, 2006

I demand that the governments of the world pay me one billion pennies!
posted by mmrtnt at 1:02 PM on December 13, 2006

What does one have to do to "discover" a number?

Ask Georg Cantor or Leonhard Euler. I think it involves a lot of math.

But yes, googol wasn't really 'discovered' per se.
posted by oats at 1:43 PM on December 13, 2006

No space here for the milliard?
posted by imperium at 2:39 PM on December 13, 2006

information scientists couldn't remember how to spell googol

Really? You could trademark Google. You couldn't trademark "Googol". And it also let them neatly avoid paying the Googol kid's descendents.
posted by meehawl at 2:41 PM on December 13, 2006

There ought to be a name for whatever is the current number of McDonald's hamburgers that have been sold ... how about a clogestillion? (a portmanteau of clog, cholesterol and -illion). Currently, 1 clogestillion is a bit more than 100 billion.
posted by Araucaria at 3:24 PM on December 13, 2006

Some numbers are big. Some numbers are really big. Some numbers are really big and unique. Which could make them illegal.
posted by quin at 3:31 PM on December 13, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

There ought to be a name for whatever is the current number of McDonald's hamburgers that have been sold ... how about a clogestillion? (a portmanteau of clog, cholesterol and -illion). Currently, 1 clogestillion is a bit more than 100 billion.

This is weird. When I was a child, my father told me that some mathematician had proposed a name for a similar concept, a huge integer that keeps getting bigger. He claimed the neologism was a "Cheerial" or some such, derived from the total number of Cheerios ever created. I don't think my father was bullshiting me.

I love using the Internet to track down the weird loose ends of childhood beliefs, and I have been remarkably successful so far, except for the notion of the "Cheerial". By the way, this would have occurred in the early 1970's.

Thanks for the link to the MegaPenny Project. I feel it's one of the best illustrations of large quantities I've ever come across, and deserves wide recognition.
posted by Tube at 3:50 PM on December 13, 2006

3→2→2→2

or, if you're over it, ∞.
posted by eriko at 4:15 PM on December 13, 2006

My favourite number is lim{n->∞} (1/n)
posted by tehloki at 4:28 PM on December 13, 2006

If only they'd had a decent search engine available, they could have asked the web how to spell it. posted by Plutor.

Gee. You seem to have fallen down a very deep, dark well!

Really? You could trademark Google. You couldn't trademark "Googol". And it also let them neatly avoid paying the Googol kid's descendents. posted by meehawl at 2:41 PM PST

Really. (Wikipedia.) The trademark issues were just a slaphappy accident. You forget that Google started out as an undergrad CS project/experiment on a tiny box, not as a "startup" trying to make a profit from the start. (This, too, was a slap-happy accident.)
posted by loquacious at 6:38 PM on December 13, 2006

Thanks for the link to the MegaPenny Project.

Created, of course, by Metafilter's Own kokogiak!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:51 PM on December 13, 2006

The trademark issues were just a slaphappy accident.

Every story benefits from romance.
posted by meehawl at 12:55 PM on December 14, 2006

loquacious writes "You forget that Google started out as an undergrad CS project/experiment on a tiny box, not as a 'startup' trying to make a profit from the start. (This, too, was a slap-happy accident.)"

I think that's the most fucked-up thing about both Google and Microsoft. for everyone involved in those places from day 1, it was like playing guitar in your parents' garage, and then becoming U2 overnight.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 7:32 AM on December 16, 2006