BY THE NUMBERS
I am reading a book. It is about Numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. Thousands of numbers. Millions of them. Billions of them.
Its premise is when numbers become so large we cannot comprehend them. The authors believe they have found a way to solve this. It is by telling mathematical stories.
To begin they use the true story of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. It is estimated he is worth 198 Billion dollars. Hard to imagine that kind of money.
To help us the authors ask us to imagine a staircase.
Each step represents $100 thousand dollars in the bank.
Half of all Americans cannot reach even the first step. 50 percent of Americans don’t have $100 thousand dollars. And, of all the people in the entire world… 90 percent cannot reach this first step. 90 percent of people in the world do not have $100,000.
After 4 steps, 75 percent of Americans drop out. By the 10th step – 1 million dollars – 90 percent of Americans cannot go on. They just don’t have the money.
To reach the financial worth of Mr. Bezos would require a staircase of… TWO MILLION STEPS.
This is a simple example, but it does give us some idea of what 178 billion dollars really is.
The book is called, “Making Numbers Count” by Chuck Heath and Karla Starr.
Understanding numbers is not as easy as… one, two, three.
Dear readers, I wish you increasing numbers.
(written by Virgil Dominic)