Score to Billions (short Scale) (score to B)

1 score equals 2×10⁻⁸ billions (short scale) exactly.

1 score = 2×10⁻⁸ billions (short scale)

How to convert score to billions (short scale)

To convert score to billions (short scale), multiply the number of score by 2×10⁻⁸. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply billions (short scale) by 50,000,000.

billions (short scale) = score × 2×10⁻⁸

Example: 10 score = 2×10⁻⁷ billions (short scale).

Large-number names differ around the world: this site uses the short scale (billion = 10⁹) by default, and lists the long-scale billion separately.

About these units

Score (score)

General & non-SITraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Twenty items. Seen in 'threescore years and ten' and 'four score and seven years ago'.

Score is a counting word for twenty, and it likely began as a notch. The Old Norse skor meant a notch or tally cut into a stick, and every twentieth mark was made larger, so the word came to mean twenty itself. English often pairs it with a number, as in threescore or fourscore. People also use scores loosely for a large, unspecified number.

Two famous passages keep the unit visible. In Psalm 90:10 of the King James Bible, the days of our years are threescore years and ten, which is 70, or fourscore, which is 80, if strength allows. And on November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln opened the Gettysburg Address with four score and seven years ago, meaning 87 years, which counts back to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. A score of years is simply two decades.

1 score = 20 pieces (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Score (number); King James Bible, Psalm 90:10 (BibleHub); Wikipedia: Gettysburg Address

Billion (short Scale) (B)

General & non-SICurrent unit

One thousand million (10⁹). The meaning used in the US, UK and most English-speaking countries today.

For decades British and American speakers meant different things by billion. The short-scale sense, a thousand million, took hold in the United States in the 19th century, while Britain kept the older meaning of a million million. From the 1950s the short scale spread through British technical writing and journalism, and Winston Churchill had remarked in 1941 that for practical financial purposes a billion was a thousand millions.

The official break came on December 20, 1974. Asked in Parliament whether ministers would be required to use the traditional British meaning, Prime Minister Harold Wilson answered no, explaining that billion was now used internationally for 1,000 million and that using it any other way would cause confusion. He conceded it could still be read as a million million and asked colleagues to avoid ambiguity. Today a billion is 10⁹, matching the SI prefix giga, and the UN projected that world population would reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022.

1 billion (short scale) = 1,000,000,000 pieces (exactly).

Sources: Hansard, 20 Dec 1974: Billion (Definition), written answer; Wikipedia: Billion; United Nations: Day of Eight Billion

Related conversions

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