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Humans are terrible with big numbers. Once they become so big we don't have real-world comparisons things start to break down. 12 is a number you can relate to

by mixmax 17y ago

Humans are terrible with big numbers. Once they become so big we don't have real-world comparisons things start to break down. 12 is a number you can relate to because you can picture 12 apples. And you can compare it with 100 apples. Or oranges ;-) Once you get into the territory of millions, billions and trillions we don't have any meaningful comparisons to guide us. The result is that we don't really grok the difference between a million and a trillion. The remedy is charts. If you make a barchart showing the difference between a million and a trillion it becomes obvious that there's a huge difference.

ivankirigin 17y ago
The order difference between iRobot's revenue (10^8), and the defense budget (10^11) is smaller than difference between a Starbucks coffee (10^0) and a car (10^4) or a house (10^5). I would hope people could handle that math. I suppose the mortgage crisis is evidence that people can't handle even that every day math. I agree visualization is a great solution.
- mixmax 17y ago
  Nice comparisons. The problem is not that people can't handle it, the problem is that people don't think about it. I'm pretty good at math (in comparison to most people here I'm probably terrible but anyway) and I don't really think much about it. It's easy to do the math and come up with comparisons like you did, but you're exposed to so many numbers and so much information that you don't really bother. Thus "Government overruns budget by $10 billion" becomes the same headline as "Government overruns budget by $10 trillion" in my mind whereas the headline "teen has three daughters" is distinctly and instantly different than "teen has fifty daughters"
  - ivankirigin 17y ago
    teen has 3000 daughters Indeed
jpwagner 17y ago
I think you make a good point. I'd liken this also to Mike Caro's poker concept of the "Threshold of Misery"...Suppose you considered $1,000 a lot of money. Then, mentally, losing $400 is bad, but not as bad as losing $800, but losing $4,000 is roughly just as bad as losing $5,000 despite the fact that the difference is "a lot of money". The government pretty consistently throws good money after bad.

by mixmax 17y ago

ivankirigin 17y ago

The order difference between iRobot's revenue (10^8), and the defense budget (10^11) is smaller than difference between a Starbucks coffee (10^0) and a car (10^4) or a house (10^5). I would hope people could handle that math. I suppose the mortgage crisis is evidence that people can't handle even that every day math. I agree visualization is a great solution.

mixmax 17y ago
Nice comparisons. The problem is not that people can't handle it, the problem is that people don't think about it. I'm pretty good at math (in comparison to most people here I'm probably terrible but anyway) and I don't really think much about it. It's easy to do the math and come up with comparisons like you did, but you're exposed to so many numbers and so much information that you don't really bother. Thus "Government overruns budget by $10 billion" becomes the same headline as "Government overruns budget by $10 trillion" in my mind whereas the headline "teen has three daughters" is distinctly and instantly different than "teen has fifty daughters"
- ivankirigin 17y ago
  teen has 3000 daughters Indeed

jpwagner 17y ago

I think you make a good point. I'd liken this also to Mike Caro's poker concept of the "Threshold of Misery"...Suppose you considered $1,000 a lot of money. Then, mentally, losing $400 is bad, but not as bad as losing $800, but losing $4,000 is roughly just as bad as losing $5,000 despite the fact that the difference is "a lot of money". The government pretty consistently throws good money after bad.