4 ms·
Sorry for being grumpy, but how does it help to say that "1 petabyte = 20 million four-drawer filling cabinets filled with text"? Changing one huge number (1pb)
by fserb 17y ago
Sorry for being grumpy, but how does it help to say that "1 petabyte = 20 million four-drawer filling cabinets filled with text"? Changing one huge number (1pb) with another (20M) doesn't add much to the overall understandability. The other examples are similar in nature. They're either comparisons with other giant magnitudes (10B facebook photos) or comparisons with things we have no fucking clue of how big they really are (HD manufactured in 1995, google's processed data).
"1 petabyte is a lot of data". Oh rly?
- scott_s 17y agoIt appeals to our experience with everyday things. We have a mental model for how much information is on a piece of paper, in a book, or in a second of video.
- jdrock 17y agoI don't think anyone can properly visualize 20 million of anything.
- scott_s 17y agoNo, we can't. But "20 million cabinets of text" has more meaning to us than 10^15 bytes.
- ableal 17y agoThat's what - one Empire State Building worth of cabinets ? 100 floors * 100 offices/floor * 20 cabinets/office = 200k cabinets ... Hmm. Off by a couple of orders of magnitude. More buildings or squeeze until the pips squeak.
- ableal 17y agoSeems the E.S.B. volume is about 1 million cubic meters and a 4 drawer cabinet is about 0.4 cubic meters. So, ten buildings filled solid. Incidentally, data via Google. Wolfram Alfa pouted on the building query. (Yes, I'm easily amused. Or distracted: http://xkcd.com/356/ http://xkcd.com/356/)
- wlievens 17y agoI had the same feeling. It doesn't help you fathom anything at all.