Comment by chrisweekly
7 days ago
Yeah. I think most ppl (incl me) lack strong intuition about things at scales outside our human day-to-day. Reminds me of a conversation about wealth, someone said "The difference between a million and a billion is... about a billion."
A tenth of a percent is often a rounding error. So the difference between a million and a billion truly is about a billion.
When the above isn’t enough to light a bulb, I like introduce that as analogous to pennies.
1 penny is $0.01 10 pennies is $0.1 100 pennies is $1 1,000 pennies is $10 10,000 pennies is $100 100,000 pennies is $1,000 1,000,000 pennies is $10,000 10,000,000 pennies is $100,000 100,000,000 pennies is $1,000,000 1,000,000,000 pennies is $10,000,000
Most people understand that ten million dollars is not just a different amount but a distinct kind of amount from ten thousand dollars. The powers of ten seem to become clearer with a smaller starting amount. Once they grasp the above, point out that the relationship is the same if everything starts 100 times as large.
There’s also a great one out there comparing 1,000 to 1 million to 1 billion seconds, converted to years plus days.