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Have the Numbers Gotten Too Big to Understand?

Written by Michelle Haimoff

Tuesday, 14 October 2008

In 1956, a mathematician by the name of George A. Miller came up with the magical number seven. Plus or minus two digits, seven numbers are about the most humans are capable of processing. Perhaps this is why phone numbers are seven digits long.

Have the Numbers Gotten Too Big to Understand?

Photo: Claudecf, Creative Commons, Flickr

The longest string of numbers that anyone has ever memorized is less than 100,000. Akira Haraguchi from Japan set a new world record by memorizing the first 83,431 decimal places of pi (3.14159) in 2005.

Considering how difficult it is for us to conceive of numbers above 100,000, how are we supposed to understand the enormity of a $700 billion bailout? Or a potential $1 trillion federal budget deficit? How much more is $100 billion than $10 billion? Doesn't $1 trillion sound a lot like a zillion, jillion or gazillion?

In its definition of the suffix "-illion", Wikipedia explains, "Words ending in the sound '-illion', such as zillion, jillion, and gazillion,are often used as fictitious names for an unspecified, large number by analogy to names of large numbers such as million, billion and trillion. Their size is dependent upon the context, but can typically be considered large enough to be unfathomable by the average human mind."

If a large part of why we got into this economic crisis is that borrowers didn't understand the "creative financing" involved in their mortgages, how can we expect them to decipher the almost fictional-sounding numbers cited in current headlines? How can any of us be expected to conceive of numbers of this magnitude?

Tax payers simply want to know how much is coming out of our pockets, regardless of whether the tab we're picking up amounts to billions, a trillion or a zillion.

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Comments (2)

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written by David Neubert , October 16, 2008

I'm guessing it would be easier to memorize 86,000 digits of pie that to get Congress to pay off the federal debt.

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written by J Hudson , October 16, 2008

Spookier still than $ 700 billion is the size of the derivatives market, which is a very imaginary $ 516 trillion. (Is that amount greater than the net worth of Planet Earth? Stay tuned.)

Behaviorial economics is a good place to look for how people behave around numbers. Dan Ariely points out in his book that people become less careful (and less scrupulous) with money the further that money is conceptually removed from cash:

http://www.predictablyirrational.com/

Why would someone participate in expanding a trading market to $ 516 trillion imaginary dollars? Maybe for the same reason athletes take steroids:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/business/05view.html

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Michelle Haimoff
		About the author:
		Michelle Haimoff is a native New Yorker living and writing in Greenwich Village. She has written for Profile Magazine, L Magazine and Eyewitness Travel Guides.
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