Ok so I tried and the number differences broke the weird little graphing thing I was using.
so here we have one thousand (1,000) not showing
one million (1,000,000) at one pixel
and one billlion (100,000,000) is the big pilon there.
I added fifty million in to show because that graph goes in increments of 50 million.
So how much is 50 million compared to a million though, it’s only one pixel?
so smol.
But still we’re trying to get down to a thousand, (which is ten hundred-dollar-bills.)
So what does a million look like compared to a thousand?
oh. We broke it again. It will only go in 50 thousands.
So we got to look at how big 50k is compared to our wad of hunjies.
This is why i like using the seconds instead of graphs…
But I won’t give up here.
the reason it’s so so hard to process is because a BILLION is an enormous number. there comes a point with numbers where we can’t actually process them and its just like…a lot. And more than “a lot” is still “a lot”.
So we need visual representation. Lets use pennies (thanks megapenny)
Imagine a penny. Just one.
Ok, you get a thousand pennies a week, and you end up with 52 thousand in a year. If they were dollars that’s a nice paying wage.
with me?
now this is a thousand pennies.
this is 50 thousand pennies (1 square foot solid of pennies! COOOOL)
It’s roughly how many pennies you would have in a year if you got a thousand pennies a week.
This is a million pennies
And this is a billion pennies
(Which is 5 schoolbuss sized blocks of solid pennies.)
The problem with numbers is that we see them written like this
1
100
1000
1000000
1000000000
And we kind of subconciously go “well… it’s only increasing a little at a time, like a staircase. When the progression is more like
10……….
100………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….
1000………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….
And so on. which is not a staircase I want to climb because it starts off reasonable and then jumps to building size, then mountain size.
We ‘add a zero’ which is confusing because it’s timesing (x) not adding (+).
to make ten thousand dots, I would copy all the dots in my thousand pile, and paste them ten times. to make a hundred thousand, I would copy all the dots in my ten-thousand-dot pile and paste them ten times. thats what “times by ten” means.
That’s what adding a zero is, it’s multiplying (x) the last number we had by ten. (i also say timesing: as in copy and pasting it ten times)
try it with a word document and see how many pages it takes to get you a billion dots, and how many it takes for 15 thousand (minimum wage anual)
hopefully this was at least somewhat useful.
Anyway, the point is that if we imagine them as dollar coins, and one square block is established as good enough to live by a year, there’s no reason one individual deserves 5 bus-worths.
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