Trillion, Billion, Million

[VoteForRonPaul]

I wonder if the majority of people understands what these terms are equal to?
I met people who really cannot differentiate between these amounts correctly, or confused about it (Okay this is not a sin). But I believe they know it is big money but how big? :confused:
So I wonder if a brief illustration of these amounts from Dr.Paul would result in more people who can understand the size of crisis that the country is going through right now. Because I do not think when Dr.Paul talks about 70 Trillion Dollars in debt that most people understand how big is this. What do you think everybody?

A Thousand= A thousand bucks=1000
A Million=A thousand thousand bucks=1000.000
A Billion= A thousand million bucks=1000.000.000
A Trillion=A thousand Billion bucks = A Million Million bucks=1000.000.000.000
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[Exponent]

A Thousand= A thousand bucks=1000
A Million=A thousand thousand bucks=1000.000
A Billion= A thousand million bucks=1000.000.000
A Trillion=A thousand Billion bucks = A Million Million bucks=1000.000.000.000
Using our country's standard of commas to separate groups of digits rather than periods might help, too. ;) Those dots can really throw people off.

[Nanerbeet]

Here


1,000
1,000,000
1,000,000,000
1,000,000,000,000
70,000,000,000,000



If you take $70,000,000,000,000 and divide by 300,000,000 (the population of the US), the result is: $233,333 per man woman and child or roughly $400,000 per household.

[VoteForRonPaul]

Using our country's standard of commas to separate groups of digits rather than periods might help, too. ;) Those dots can really throw people off.
I think the income tax also has been slandered for some time now ;)

[VoteForRonPaul]

Here


1,000
1,000,000
1,000,000,000
1,000,000,000,000
70,000,000,000,000



If you take $70,000,000,000,000 and divide by 300,000,000 (the population of the US), the result is: $233,333 per man woman and child or roughly $400,000 per household.

Are legal immigrants included? :D

[zadrock]

As a mathematician, I've dealt with this problem before. In fact, I remember reading about this - if you draw a long line on a blackboard and mark one end "ZERO" and the other end "ONE BILLION" and then ask someone from the class to make a mark on your line to represent ONE MILLION, the mark is (on average) made about 1/3 of the way along the line. Obviously this is very VERY wrong. The line should be 1/1000th of the way along the line, and, depending on your blackboard, should be almost indistinguishable from the line marking ZERO.

So what's the solution? How do we reach people? I try to use the concept of distance when dealing with people who don't understand the differences in scale.

For instance, let's say that ONE MILLION is a small distance that everyone can measure on their own body. The distance between your eyes is good, because it's almost the same regardless of how big/small you are.

So how far is ONE BILLION? It's going to be about half the length of a football field (maybe a tad longer).

So how far is ONE TRILLION? Ever run a marathon? That's how far one trillion is, based on this scale (26.2 miles).

So the next time someone says, a million, a billion, a trillion, what's the difference? - you can tell them the difference.

Z

[KevinDW78]

For those of us who grew up back in the late 80s, this might help:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TdnLhN4SeYY

[Theocrat]

I wonder if any of our members of Congress know how much a trillion is (except for Congressman Paul). Evidently not, since they keep borrowing this country out of debt (Let that sink in for a bit.). ;)