> But about 35 percent of people in the study used what the authors call a “segmented linear heuristic.” That means they correctly distinguish between numbers w

> But about 35 percent of people in the study used what the authors call a “segmented linear heuristic.” That means they correctly distinguish between numbers within the millions or billions, but assume that “million,” “billion,” and “trillion” are equally spaced on a number line. That kind of logarithmic thinking is a reason why I believe people don't react more strongly when they hear that Jeff Bezos is worth 100 billion dollars. The wealth of the super rich is so astronomical that people can't make sense of it. It doesn't help to say he's 100,000 times a millionaire, because even if we more or less know how wealthy a millionaire is, we can't imagine what multiplied by 100,000 means.