Talk about the match
The children watch the ODI between India and West Indies. India won with a historical batting performance by Virender Sehwag who scored 219 runs – a record in men’s ODI. On Monday when they went to school, they were still talking about it – even in class. Initially, the teacher got angry because the students were talking in his class. Then he remembered that a good teacher uses the interests of the students to educate them.
Teacher: How many of you watched the last cricket match?
Many students raised their hands. Some wanted to say something but the teacher took control and said: It must have been more exciting to watch the game in the stadium rather than on the TV. Do you know how many people watched it in the stadium?
How many people sat in the stadium?
Tinku: I know that this stadium can seat 30,000 people and it was full. Is this the largest cricket stadium in India?
Teacher: No. The largest cricket stadium in India can seat 90,000 people but we should get back to this match. Do you know how many people watched this match live – in the stadium, on TV, on the Internet or listened to the commentary on the radio? Who wants to guess?
Many students raised their hands and gave vague answers but then the teacher said: Many crores of people watched it.
Sheepishly one student asked: Sir, what is a crore? How many is that?
Crore is 1,00,00,000
Teacher: Crore is a large number but not the largest one. Let me first ask you a question. Tinku, you said that there were 30,000 person watching the game. I don’t know how much each person pays for the ticket. I know that the tickets are expensive. I am just going to ask you now, how much is the total ticket money if each ticket is rupees (Rs.) 1000.
Tinku: I can just write 30,000 with three more zeros Rs. 30000000
Teacher: Today’s lesson is on the big numbers. Everyone in the class can count up to 1000. If you count 100 times to 1000, the total counts will be 100 times 1000 or 100,000 which is called 1 lakh.
Tinku: Sir, now I remember 100 times one lakh is 1 crore. Then the amount of money for the tickets would be 1000 times Rs 30000 which would become 100 times 3 lakhs (100 x 3,00,000) which is Rs 3 crore (3,00,00,000).
Teacher: Great. Now, another number – a little over 129 crore people live in India. Because 100 crore is arab, we could say 1 arab and 29 crore people live in India.
Tinku: That’s a big number. Sir, can we have bigger numbers.
Teacher: In India, the numbers take names as 100 multiples of 1000: lakh, crore, arab, kharab, neel, padma, sankh, mahasankh and so on. However, when the numbers are larger than one arab, usually one calls them as multiples of one arab like 600 arabs rather than 6 kharabs. Some people would even prefer to call it 60,000 crores.
Million is 1,000,000
Tinku was really interested in numbers and could not resist asking: Sir, then what is a million?
Teacher: Tinku, you must watch a lot of American TV. The western countries use a slightly different system for the large numbers. After 1000, they have a new name for a number when it reaches another multiple of 1000. For example one thousand thousands becomes a million, and one thousand millions becomes a billion. You can keep going like trillion, quadrillian and so on.
Centillion is 1 followed by 303 zeros
Tanya: Sir, I have two questions. If I keep repeating like you did million, billion up to 100 times, would they call it a centillion?
Teacher: That is right but where did you learn that from?
Tanya: I didn’t. I saw that when Sehwag hit a 100 runs, they called it a century. So I made it up from there. First, I thought of it as a centurillian which sounded silly. So I called it a centillion. So would the centillion be one followed by 303 zeros?
Teacher: Tanya, that’s right but you said you had two questions. What is the second one?
Tanya: If they have different number systems, what happens when they get together – I mean the Indian and the Western people?
Teacher: Mathematicians and scientists just write how many zeros but they don’t actually write it as the number of zeros. They would write like 107 meaning that it is one followed by seven zeros. You will understand the meaning of the scientific notations after you have learned the exponents. I think soon the class will be over. So I will write the three systems on the board and you can write them in your notebooks.
Writing numbers in different systems
| Indian Name | Scientific | Western Name |
| Hazaar (1000) | 103 | Thousand (1000) |
| Lakh (100,000) | 105 | 100 Thousand (100,000) |
| 10 lakh (10,00,000) | 106 | Million (1000,000) |
| Crore (100,00,000) | 107 | 10 million (10,000,000) |
| 10 crore (10,00,00,00) | 108 | 100 million |
| Arab (100,00,00,000) | 109 | Billion |
Challenge
In 2017, the earnings of the bollywood/hollywood Quantico actress Priyanka Chopra reached ten million dollars. In the same year ShahRukh Khan earned Rs. 266 crores. If a dollar is worth Rs. 70, who earned more? By the way, Salman Khan earned Rs. 259 crore in the same year.
Solution: Priyanka Chopra’s earnings: US$ 10 million = US$ 1 x 107 = $ 70 x 107 =
Rs. 70 crores. This is less than ShahRukh Khan’s earning of Rs. 266 crores.
You can also do this by starting with ShahRukh Khan’s earning of Rs. 266 crores = $ 266 x 107 = $ 2660 million = US$ 2660/70 million = US$38 million which is more than Priyanka Chopra’s earnings of US$10 million.
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