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)
15 Comments
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 7 pts · 102d
Metric system and SI Prefixes anyone?!?? Musk has 600 G$ we have 8 Gppl. 600G$/8Gppl = 75$/p
Also seems to give the correct answer, in contrast to your wrong 7500$.
I feel this issue has long been solved (since the French revolution). Except in one big country who is allergic to proper maths and engineering... (plus Liberia and Myanmar)
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 2 pts · 102d
That's probably better, yeah. (also, I fixed my mistake, thanks for pointing it out)
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 2 pts · 102d
Hmmh. I mean your original calculation should have worked as well, it was just a bit complicated so mistakes happen. I'm still more happy with what I proposed. It's the same thing as engineering notation. Which is scientific notation, just skip the odd exponents, that's overly complicated and a completely unnecessary extra step. The exponent notation will deal nicely with this anyway. 600 billions is 600e9 (instead of 6e11) it's the same number just that nobody has a clue what 10^11 is and everyone knows how many zeroes after a billion. So you skip all unnecessary conversions and just copy the number. It's 600e9/8e9 for the old example, which is 75e0 = 75. Or 600e9/1e6 in the new example, which is 600/1 e (9-6) = 600e3. You also immediately know it's 600k.
Engineers use it because it's really useful for real-world numbers. Also why it's in the metric system. And the less conversions and operations, the less mistakes.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 2 pts · 102d
TIL. I like this
JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 102d
Apparently this method doesn't work for everyone. You might want to check your math.
(As a clue, 600 billion is 600e9)
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 102d
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.ca · 1 pts · 102d
Wow, thanks for explaining that to me.
Writing it as 600e9 was a clue for where you messed up the math with the "8e7".
Did you know that a quarter isn't .25 cents? People get confused by small numbers too.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 102d
What on earth makes you believe those people would better understand using the e notation?
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 3 pts · 101d
I'm not sure now that I think about it.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 101d
😁
kibblebits@quokk.au · 1 pts · 102d
Base12 is god
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 102d
I can see why, but it's going to take a lot of time to switch from the decimal system - a hundred years at least.
Also, I guess I could say powers-of-. We just happen to be using powers of 9+1.
kibblebits@quokk.au · 2 pts · 102d
It’s easy when you have 6 fingers.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 102d
Stanford Pines probably loves base 12.
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 102d
on each hand