Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Public Service: Visualizing a Trillion

William Dembski
April 25, 2009
Intelligent Design
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Trillions are much in the news lately regarding the economy. Such large numbers also come up in the small probability arguments inherent in design inferences (small probabilities are reciprocals of large numbers). As a public service, I’m herewith presenting some visuals for dealing with large numbers:

$10,000
——————————————————— ———————————————————
$1,000,000
——————————————————— ———————————————————
$100,000,000
——————————————————— ———————————————————
$1,000,000,000
——————————————————— ———————————————————
$1,000,000,000,000

Comments
The late Sen. Everett Dirksen once famously said
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
Taking inflation into account since he said this, perhaps billion ought to be changed to trillion.DonaldM
April 27, 2009
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I wonder if those who whined about the Reagan deficits will complain about any of this?William Wallace
April 26, 2009
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Wow. A billion iPhone apps downloaded from the Apple App Store as of 4/24. Now...on to a trillion!Lutepisc
April 26, 2009
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In per-capita terms, what this Admin is doing to our nation is criminal. Of course, being financed by a convited felon in France, George Soros, it does not surprise me. Soros wanta America to be weaker and his crooked billionaire wishes have been granted. Meanwhile as a pay for play scam, Soros gets IndyBank as a gift.DATCG
April 26, 2009
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NPR has a nice graphic that does that hereDavid Kellogg
April 26, 2009
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Of course when dealing with the economy a better strategy is to view the numbers in per-capita terms, or better yet as a percentage of GDP.mauka
April 25, 2009
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