Most people can’t handle dealing with million/billion/… numbers, which leads to mistakes like “Elon Musk has 600 billion dollars, he could give every person on Earth a million dollars and still be a billionaire”.

Doing that with scientific notation would be clearer:
600 billion dollars=6e11
divided by 1 million dollars per person (1e6)

(6/1)e(11-6)=6e5=600 000 people Elon can give money to before running out (and that’s if we assume he has that much in cash and not assets and stuff)

  • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    Most people can’t handle dealing with million/billion/… numbers, which leads to mistakes like “Elon Musk has 600 billion dollars, he could give every person on Earth a million dollars and still be a billionaire”.

    Doing that with scientific notation would be clearer: 600 billion dollars=6e11=60e10 divided by 8 billion people=8e7

    (60/8)e(10-7)=7.5e3=7500 dollars

    Apparently this method doesn’t work for everyone. You might want to check your math.

    (As a clue, 600 billion is 600e9)

    • MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      Yes, 600 billion, which I wrote, is 60010^9, which is 6010^10 or 6*10^11.

      But I did make a mistake on 8 billion people, so there’s that.

      … I guess we just can’t handle large numbers well either way.

      EDIT: Fixed and edited to give a better example where this approach works better

      • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Yes, 600 billion, which I wrote, is 600*10^9, which is 60*10^10 or 6*10^11.

        Wow, thanks for explaining that to me.

        Writing it as 600e9 was a clue for where you messed up the math with the “8e7”.

        … I guess we just can’t handle large numbers well either way.

        Did you know that a quarter isn’t .25 cents? People get confused by small numbers too.