Did you mean “how many numbers?”
Sounds a bit Americanised to me, but you specifically said “English spelling”.
I had in mind “which numbers” rather than “how many numbers”, but I had (unfortunately) assumed that my grandson’s insistence that ‘one hundred one’ was the current norm.
However, thebadyogi came up with the answer to “how many numbers” and had clearly included all those with the word ‘and’ such as ‘one hundred and one’. (At least that’s what I am presuming he did). I considered that deserved a ‘well done’.
My subsequent post was to re-open the teaser with the use of ‘and’ more clearly excluded.
As for “English spelling” … that was an attempt to exclude French, German, Italian, Scandinavian and other languages where numbers, such as fourteen in French, have an ‘a’ that doesn’t appear in the English spelling. This being a Forum where quite a few people would arrive at differing answers depending on their choice of language !
Cheers
Don
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That confused me, the question was “which” not “how many”, and I’ve never heard of omitting the “and” on high numbers….
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Your grandson had no As unless he says “a hundred”
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Well-spotted ! (I normally say “one hundred”; “one hundred and one” etc but you’re right, many people say “a hundred”; “a hundred and one” etc
I think we had best put this one to bed before we find too many more ‘As’ in the numbers 
It’s confused me too Mike !
I just HAD to try Google …
“Fun Fact: If you were to spell out every number from 1-999, not one contains the letter ‘A’. ‘A’ is the second most commonly-used letter, yet one thousand (1,000) is the first number spelt out that has the first A in it”
There were quite a few other quotes along similar lines. None of them seemed to suggest that “A hundred and one” (for example) counted as two x ‘A’
So, apologies from me for the sub-standard wording in the initial teaser.
At the risk of digging a deeper hole …
When does the first letter ‘b’ appear ?
And the first letter ‘c’ ?
PS I only noticed these two options whilst Googling !
I asked Mrs R this question and she started counting from one!
I worked out that it would take her over 31,000 years to reach the correct answer (counting one number per second). She then argued (in her best American accent) that it would only take about 31 years!
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Ravvie, it’s good to see that somebody continues to be determined to retain the traditional UK designation of a million millions.
But I think that, in the interests of avoiding some sort of global misunderstanding, we should fall in line with the current, smaller designation, adopted by the international community. I think it was Denis Healy c.1975 who agreed that the UK would also fall into line ?
Going back to the initial post about letter ‘A’ …
Mrs D pointed that whenever I am asked to read out a number I usually say, for something like 101, “Wun Zero Wun”.
And for 989 (eg hectopascals) I would say “Nin-er, ait, nin-er, hectopascals”
So Mrs D considers that the first appearance of ‘A’ is in the digit ‘8’. I have no intention of disagreeing
I was trying to be diplomatic by offering both variations.
I do think it odd that a centillion has 303 zeros rather than a more intuitive 600 zeros (being 100 lots of the 6 zeros in a million).
I know !
Congratulations and best wishes to Mrs R for keeping you on the straight and narrow.
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I think we need to be aware of both the ‘Short Scale’ and the ‘Long Scale’ of describing large numbers.
The UN, USA, UK and many others, use the Short Scale where A Billion is A Thousand Million = 10^9
The Long Scale puts A Billion at A Million Millions = 10^12.
They use the same descriptor, Billion, but have have a different value. The Short Scale increases by Thousands. the Long Scale by Millions. The same applies to Trillions, Quadrillions etc etc. All nicely confusing.
My understanding is that the letter ‘c’ first appears in ‘Octillion’. In the Short Scale this = 10^27. In the Long Scale Octillion = 10^48
But i admit i’m no expert. And I don’t see much use for this info in my weekly trip to Waitrose
PS there are also other scales for large or small numbers. Mega, Giga, Tera, milli, nano, …
And then there are the completely bonkers number scales of googol, plex, bang, stack which can be combined in different ways, for example a googol-stack-bang-plex is a bit on the large size!
Apparently, mathematicians have endless fun at parties discussing which variation is the biggest. But I don’t get invited to such parties.
As an aside, I googled “Googol” and perhaps unsurprisingly, Google autocorrected me to search for Google.
Sorry for the temporary thread drift.
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Racing !
a) You are in a race. You overtake the person in second place. What position are you now ?
b) you are in a race. You overtake the person in last place. What position are you now ?
a) You are now in second place.
b) You have lapped the person who is in last place, but so may someone ahead of you, so there isn’t a definitive answer to where you are in the race, other than ahead by a lap of the last person.
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Nice assessment Mike.
a) well done.
b) if it’s an oval track event, eg 1,500m, you could overtake (lap, as you said) the last person (assuming it wasn’t you!) and you would retain your original position. If it’s not a multi-lap race, eg 100m or a marathon, nobody can overtake the last person.
Well done.
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The first 21 examples should enable you to find the answer to the 22nd example …
8089 = 6
7111 = 0
6666 = 4
2172 = 0
3213 = 0
7662 = 2
9313 = 1
0000 = 4
1111 = 0
8193 = 3
2222 = 0
3333 = 0
1012 = 1
5555 = 0
8096 = 5
7777 = 0
9999 = 4
7576 = 1
6855 = 3
9881 = 5
5531 = 0
2581 = ?
The one above is more about observation than arithmetic