a sense of perspective: how large is one thousand? one million? one billion? one trillion?

[spadeaceman]

Large numbers are difficult for us to grasp the magnitude of. Oh, we can use logic and mathematics to intellectually designate their size, but emotionally, anything above the "thousand" designation tends to fall into a general "really really really big" category. Exactly how large is one thousand? one million? one billion? one trillion? It's

Comments

[smoke]

The first thought that popped into my mind since I'm a visual person would be it would help put it into perspective for me if some kind of bar graph or pie chart where made to show how big one is compared to the other. But I don't know if even that would truly help someone fathom how big something like a billion really is. Also if it's inaccurate it may mislead you but again it was just the first thing that popped into my head. I myself am not much of a math person (never was) so just thinking of numbers doesn't do a lot for me although your examples seemed to be well written and I could understand it.