Word: number
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Seriously, what is it? To the average person, a number that big probably doesn't mean much. At some point long before the hundred-billion-dollar mark, large numbers simply become figures on the page, well beyond human scale and intuitive understanding. And yet as discussion about the economy and the impressive numbers that come along with it continue to dominate the news, it may be more important than ever to try to understand. Is a $700 billion financial-industry bailout a lot? Is a $775 billion economic-stimulus package enough? (See the worst business deals...
...common strategy for beginning to understand big numbers is to devise visual representations. One time, sitting at a baseball game in Philadelphia, Paulos started counting seats along the first-base line. Multiplying the number of seats in a row by the number of rows, Paulos came up with a section of the stadium that he figured contained about 10,000 seats - an image he can now think back to whenever a person starts talking about tens of thousands of a particular thing. When numbers get too large, though, that method breaks down. A stack of one trillion $1 bills would...
...Numbers Game, Dilnot and his co-author, journalist Michael Blastland, suggest dividing government spending by the number of citizens and the number of weeks in a year. A $700 billion bailout thereby translates into $45 per week for each American man, woman and child. Going one step further, it comes out to $6 a day. Are you willing to pay $6 a day to have a functioning financial system...
...Saturday, an inbound Red Line train rolled into Harvard Station, holding a number of people wearing no pants. Others looked on with surprise at the spectacle of boxers, briefs and panties. The half-naked riders were participating in the event “No Pants on January 10, 2008,” hosted by The Boston Society of Spontaneity...
...assessors across the country have seen an uptick in the number of homeowners challenging their homes' appraisal value. The Wall Street Journal reported that in St. Tammany Parish, La., 15,000 residents - instead of the usual 500 - requested a review of their 2008 tax bills. And the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Cuyahoga County, which has about 1,300 foreclosures a month, saw three times as many appeals in 2007 compared with previous tax cycles. (See pictures of Cleveland's housing crisis...