-yllion
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-yllion is a proposal from Donald Knuth for the terminology and symbols of an alternate decimal superbase system. In it, he adapts the familiar English terms for large numbers to provide a systematic set of names for much larger numbers. In addition to providing an extended range, -yllion also dodges the long and short scale ambiguity of -illion.
Knuth's digit grouping is exponential instead of linear; each division doubles the number of digits handled, whereas the familiar system only adds three or six more. His system is basically the same as one of the ancient and now-unused Chinese numeral systems, in which units stand for 104, 108, 1016, 1032, and so on.
| Numeral systems by culture | |
|---|---|
| Hindu-Arabic numerals | |
| Indian Eastern Arabic Khmer |
Indian family Brahmi Thai |
| East Asian numerals | |
| Chinese Suzhou Counting rods |
Japanese Korean |
| Alphabetic numerals | |
| Abjad Armenian Cyrillic Ge'ez |
Hebrew Greek (Ionian) Āryabhaṭa |
| Other systems | |
| Attic Babylonian Egyptian Etruscan |
Mayan Roman Urnfield |
| List of numeral system topics | |
| Positional systems by base | |
| Decimal (10) | |
| 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 | |
| 1, 3, 9, 12, 20, 24, 30, 36, 60, more… | |
[edit] Details and examples
In Knuth's -yllion proposal:
- 1 to 99 have their usual names.
- 100 to 9999 are divided before the 2nd-last digit and named "blah hundred blah". (e.g. 1234 is "twelve hundred thirty-four"; 7623 is "seventy-six hundred twenty-three")
- 104 to 108-1 are divided before the 4th-last digit and named "blah myriad blah". Knuth also introduces at this level a grouping symbol (comma) for the numeral. So, 382,1902 is "3 hundred 82 myriad 19 hundred 2".
- 108 to 1016-1 are divided before the 8th-last digit and named "blah myllion blah", and a semicolon separates the digits. So 1,0002;0003,0004 is "1 myriad 2 myllion 3 myriad 4"
- 1016 to 1032-1 are divided before the 16th-last digit and named "blah byllion blah", and a colon separates the digits. So 12:0003,0004;0506,7089 is "12 byllion 3 myriad 4 myllion 5 hundred 06 myriad 70 hundred 89"
- etc.
Each new number name is the square of the previous one — therefore, each new name covers twice as many digits. Knuth continues borrowing the traditional names changing "illion" to "yllion" on each one. Abstractly, then, "one n-yllion" is 
. "One trigintyllion" would have nearly forty-three myllion digits.
[edit] See also
- Alternatives to Knuth's proposal that date back to the French Renaissance came from Nicolas Chuquet and Jacques Peletier du Mans.
- A related proposal by Knuth is his up-arrow notation.
[edit] References
- Donald E. Knuth. Supernatural Numbers in The Mathematical Gardener (edited by D. A. Klarner). Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, 1981. 310—325.
- Robert P. Munafo. Large Numbers, 1996-2008.
