The news surrounding our economic crisis, including the US stimulus package and the bailouts of the banking and auto industry, have us flinging around huge numbers that are difficult to grasp. That’s why I appreciated an article that appeared in my newsreader today from CNN.
In the article Numb and Number: Is trillion the new billion? Christine Romans uses the following examples from Temple University math professor John Allen Paulos to give meaning to million, billion and trillion.
“A million seconds is about 11½ days. A billion seconds is about 32 years, and a trillion seconds is 32,000 years,” Paulos said. “People tend to lump them together, perhaps because they rhyme, but if you think of it in terms of a jail sentence, do you want to go to jail for 11½ days or 32 years or maybe 32,000 years? So, they’re vastly different, and people generally don’t really have a real visceral grasp of the differences among them.”
I find this type of example much more comprehensible than the others I’ve read, such as a stack of bills reaching 1/3 of the way to the moon.
I don’t know that as a computer teacher in an elementary school I’m going to get to use this example in the next few days or months, but I know it will help give meaning to the news as I read it.
How do you make large numbers accessible to your students?
Hi Susan,
I gave three examples and asked a similar question at this post on my blog. The photographs are my favorite.
Ross
My class and I heard that you could have spent 1 million dollars a day since Jesus was born and you still wouldn’t have spent one trillion dollars.
Ross, Thanks for the link. Those are good photos.
Anonymous, WoW! That does help get my brain around it; and it scares me even more about the economy!
Why not compare it to how much a person earns in a lifetime? The average person earns, say, $1,000,000 (I’m making this number up) in the course of thirty years of work. It would take 1000 people working 30 years each to earn a billion. It would take 1,000,000 people 30 years to earn a trillion dollars. You might even switch it up by saying that each person contributes, say, $100,000 in taxes during a lifetime of work. How many people’s lifetimes of taxes would equal a trillion?