Listening to NPR this morning I learned that the latest budget "blueprint" (what the hell?) coming out of Washington is for an annual budget of three trillion dollars in the next fiscal year. Three trillion, got it?
Some grade school kids visiting the Capitol were asked to guess how big the federal budget was, and the guesses ranged from $2,500 all the way up to $75,000. When they were told the real number, three trillion, they all said "Ohhhhh...!" as if the number meant something to them.
It did mean something to them. It meant "really really big, so big as to be completely beyond my understanding." That self-imposed limit on understanding is a disease, metaphorically, that most of us suffer from. It has a cure.
Considered as a number three trillion is a Big Honker, no question. In the same category, Big Honking Numbers, are such numbers as a million, a billion, and a trillion. They get bigger as we read across the list, but they're all more or less the same - Big Honkers.
Put aside the notion that they are numbers and think of them as quantities and they will start to make sense.
NPR talked of dollars, so use dollars. Start with 1 million dollars. The government owes you 1 million dollars. (That's a hypothetical situation, not a legally binding admission of debt. In fact it's an understatement.) It is going to pay you back 1 million dollars, 1 dollar at a time, 1 dollar every 1 second, 24 hours a day until it has paid you everything it owes you. How long will it take?
It will take about 11.5 days to pay you. I used a calculator for that, it didn't take me but 10 seconds. $10 worth of time at $1 per second.
So 1 million is 11.5 days. What about 1 billion?
1 billion is 1,000 times more than 1 million, or 11,574 days. This number is too big. Turn it into years. It's 31.7 years (I ignored leap years.)
11.5 days compared to 31.7 years. The first two Big Honkers suddenly don't look anything like one another. 1 million is a piker.
1 trillion dollars gets paid back... get the calculator out again... gets paid back in 31,700 years. Damn! 1 trillion is really really big.
And three trillion is about 95,000 years.
1 million = 11.5 days
1 billion = 31.7 years
1 trillion = 31,700 years
3 trillion = 95,000 years
That's numerical thinking.
Some grade school kids visiting the Capitol were asked to guess how big the federal budget was, and the guesses ranged from $2,500 all the way up to $75,000. When they were told the real number, three trillion, they all said "Ohhhhh...!" as if the number meant something to them.
It did mean something to them. It meant "really really big, so big as to be completely beyond my understanding." That self-imposed limit on understanding is a disease, metaphorically, that most of us suffer from. It has a cure.
Considered as a number three trillion is a Big Honker, no question. In the same category, Big Honking Numbers, are such numbers as a million, a billion, and a trillion. They get bigger as we read across the list, but they're all more or less the same - Big Honkers.
Put aside the notion that they are numbers and think of them as quantities and they will start to make sense.
NPR talked of dollars, so use dollars. Start with 1 million dollars. The government owes you 1 million dollars. (That's a hypothetical situation, not a legally binding admission of debt. In fact it's an understatement.) It is going to pay you back 1 million dollars, 1 dollar at a time, 1 dollar every 1 second, 24 hours a day until it has paid you everything it owes you. How long will it take?
It will take about 11.5 days to pay you. I used a calculator for that, it didn't take me but 10 seconds. $10 worth of time at $1 per second.
So 1 million is 11.5 days. What about 1 billion?
1 billion is 1,000 times more than 1 million, or 11,574 days. This number is too big. Turn it into years. It's 31.7 years (I ignored leap years.)
11.5 days compared to 31.7 years. The first two Big Honkers suddenly don't look anything like one another. 1 million is a piker.
1 trillion dollars gets paid back... get the calculator out again... gets paid back in 31,700 years. Damn! 1 trillion is really really big.
And three trillion is about 95,000 years.
1 million = 11.5 days
1 billion = 31.7 years
1 trillion = 31,700 years
3 trillion = 95,000 years
That's numerical thinking.
Shall we give them the money they ask for in the "blueprint?"
On a similar topic, the federal debt this year is $9 trillion. That's 285,000 years, truly a Big Honker.
2 comments:
Your blog gets better and better. do we all have to contribute to the budget or can some of us opt not to agree?
Good examples. Interesting stuff, too. And I like the snappy new color scheme. Imua...
- B
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