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Star Wars Economics
20 minutes ago
1.12.2010
Little Letter Commas For Big-Ass Numbers
Whenever I read a large number written in full numeric form- something larger than a hundred million, say- I always need to count how many commas there are first before I can go back and read the entire number. So I wish we would substitute the first comma in large numbers with a tiny letter that would indicate what size number we're dealing with. For instance: 376t986,021,552,113- where the tiny "t" immediately tells me we're in the trillions. Of course, I realize the regular comma system has seemed to work for everyone else for thousands of years, so maybe I'm just terrible at reading big numbers.
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3 comments:
The flip side of this is how seldom, and unfortunately so, you see big numbers like that written out. I think when dealing with numbers that big it's almost imperative to write them out to their full extent - so you know how much is at stake. It's the ton of feathers vs. ton of bricks thing: which is the bigger debt, 4 trillion dollars or $4t000,000,000,000? Which is more cause for alarm? What are they trying to hide??
Very true...like Kurt Vonnegut says in Hocus Pocus, "numbers lose much of their potency when diluted by an alphabet." (Or something along those lines.) Ever since I read that, I've tried to make a habit of using numerals only. A 4 trillion dollar debt certainly appears only slightly worse than a 4 million dollar debt when you spell it out like that.
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