User:HYPERIAPATH/sandbox

Initial explanation
In 1996, John Horton Conway, Richard K. Guy, and Allan Wechsler introduced a system to name (in either the short or long scale) the powers of 1000, to complete the series started off by million, and finished at decillion or vigintillion. Extensions had been done before, but not ones that had been accepted by so many people.

Wikipedia's page on the Names of Large numbers mentions other systems for naming numbers, but these are all usually very complex and limited, or not used by many people at all. The page doesn't have any mention of a second system that exists for naming numbers that is on the same level of usefulness and complexity as Conway and Guy's system.

John Horton Conway, Richard K. Guy, and Allan Wechsler, who created the system on Wikipedia's article for Names of Large numbers, were influential mathematicians, and their system a great achievement and accepted by many mathematicians and 'number hobbyists' but their system contains multiple flaws or inconsistencies, which I have listed below:


 * The "tilli" separators are very hard to spot as they are small and blend in with the rest of the number, making it harder to read.
 * The "tilli" separators change to a "nilli" under certain conditions to do with the final separator, which is very unneccessary, as it serves no useful purpose, but complicates the system and the numbers
 * Given that this system doesn't use "millia"s as separators between different powers of 1000 of powers of 1000, it would make sense for the 1000th 'illion' to be one "tillitillion", however Conway and Guy chose, inexplicably, to call it a "millinillion", with no apparent way of fitting this into the rest of the system.
 * The different prefixes have slightly different endings depending on the prefix that comes after, e.g. before "vigin", "se" can be either "ses" or "sex". Having two is again, unnecessary, and also the base 'se' makes pronunciation harder for when it is used unchanged.
 * There can be confusion between whether part of a word is supposed to be a prefix on its own or part of another prefix because of the ordering, for example, the 102nd "illion" and the 200th - duo-centillion and duocen-tillion, respectively, which both come to "duocentillion". This also applies to the 103rd and the 300th, etc. Wikipedia's article does not even make it clear that there is a workaround, as there is no entry for the 102nd "illion". This workaround is that the prefix for 200 is "ducen" and not "duocen". This can still cause confusion in both understanding the difference, and also in pronunciation with regard to mishearing.

There are also things that the other system, which is used very widely, although most usage seems to stem from Landon Curt Noll's The English Name of a Number, has over Conway, Guy, and Wechsler's system:


 * It is consistent - the endings of each prefix and the separators do not change.
 * Better readability as the "millia"s stand out, as opposed to "tilli" which does not
 * The issue of the 102nd illion and the 200th, and the 103rd and the 300th, etc. is solved much more cleanly by having the hundred prefix before the one prefix - 102 is one cenduotillion, and 200 is one duocentillion, avoiding ambiguity.

Programs that are designed to convert between words and numbers can understand and interpret numbers using the system which is not on wikipedia much more easily as there is no issue of the separators or prefixes changing or other similar issues with inconsistency. I myself have created such a program, and in attempting to make either a completely new set of algorithms to work with Conway and Guy's system, or an algorithm to convert between the two systems, have been met with much challenge. The original program was inspired by Landon Curt Noll's program written in HTML and CSS, and so used the same system, and was not difficult to make, due to the consistency of the system as a whole.