Talk:Sagan (number)

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This article was nominated for deletion on 14 January 2009 (UTC). The result of the discussion was transwiki.

This page was proposed for deletion by an editor in the past.

Untitled[edit]

Shouldn't this be a disambiuagtion page?

Original research?[edit]

This article sounds suspiciously like original research. Can someone provide a single reference to a reputable source for this information? Otherwise, I think I'm going to go back to the redirect. →Raul654 14:05, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Nope, it's not original research; the term is in common usage in certain communities.

[1]

(Look for the "Ivy Merriot" subhead)

And if you don't believe me, Google it up yourself. "a-sagan billions"

Atlant 12:49, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not seeing anything in a Google search that leads me to beleive this is a well-defined term for 4,000,000,000. The jargonfile entry (which is not a reliable source) just says "it's a number for a lot of things". The planetary.org entry is a deadlink these days; I'm liable to AfD this in a few days, or just turn it into a disambiguation page, as we just got our second hatnote for other similar articles. -- nae'blis 19:38, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I've said, it's in common usage in many contexts. Please don't AfD it.

Atlant 22:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I don't want to delete it any more. But our search engine is telling me there's a lot of Sagans out there, so this is probably better off as a disambiguation page. Would you be amenable to transwiki-ing (moving) this to Wiktionary? It's essentially a dictionary definition of the term, and I'm not sure how it could ever be expanded to more than a stub. It would still provide a link to the witionary entry, of course. -- nae'blis 03:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(Not ignoring your question but, instead, thinking about this...)

Atlant 12:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Billions of billions[edit]

One billion of billions : shouldn't it be 1.000.000.000 times 1.000.000.000 = 10^18? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.18.245.162 (talk • contribs) .

But that's not what Sagan (or Johnny Carson) said. What was said was "billions and billions". So 2 billion + 2 billion = 4 billion.

Atlant 12:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Somehow I remember Sagan using the term "billions and billions" in the PBS TV series Cosmos. Then again, this was back in 1980. As far as parody uses, the comic strip Bloom County once featured a conversation between one of the main characters (Milo?) and Carl Sagan (overexaggerated by use of the term "billyons and billyons"). --66.210.33.200 06:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm familiar with the series, and I don't recal the phrase "billions and billions" coming up. Though, Sagan does seem quite fond of the term "billions" by itself as we know (and sometimes "billion trillion"). He did write a book named Billions and Billions in 1996, likely named after the phrase people had attributed to him. A quote from him about the phrase appears on WikiQuote [2]: "I never said it. Honest." --Robomojo 07:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Short scale assumption[edit]

I've deleted the statement from the article that says it's necessary to use the short billion in order to derive a Sagan as four billion. This is clearly not true, since any word can be substituted for "billion" in the description. For example, "The least value conforming to the constraint of ‘eggs and eggs’ must be two eggs plus two eggs, or four eggs." Dricherby (talk) 20:50, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image copyright problem with Image:Billions and Billions.jpg[edit]

The image Image:Billions and Billions.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --12:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal[edit]

It's already mentioned in the section Carl Sagan#Popularization of science, and in Indefinite and fictitious numbers#At-least numbers. In my view this is not notable enough to sustain as an article on its own and should be redirected to one or the other. - Fayenatic (talk) 08:58, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've copied the nytimes ref to Indefinite and fictitious numbers, and added another. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]