Not everyone is comfortable with numbers. Especially when they are big. If, like many, you have difficulty distinguishing between millions and billions, this simple tip will help you tell the difference.
Humanity is divided into two categories: math people and others, that is to say most people. The former are very comfortable with numbers and abstractions; the latter much less, if at all. Certainly, in life, we don’t spend our time doing calculations – and that’s fortunate! But, on a daily basis, we are all confronted with numbers, even if only when making purchases, estimating distances or talking about salaries. However, if everything goes well when the numbers are relatively small, things go wrong as soon as we manipulate large numbers. And that’s normal.
Indeed, up to 10, the mental representation of numbers is clear and intuitive, because we can rely on the fingers of the hands. Beyond that, it gets complicated quite quickly. The larger the numbers, the fuzzier the “distance” between them. In fact, it even seems to be decreasing. Exactly like when you look into the distance, because of the perspective: 1 meter is very close; 10 meters is a little further; and 100 meters, just a little further. And it’s difficult to tell the difference between 200 and 300 yards, for example, because the differences fade “visually” as the distance increases.
However, this perfectly natural phenomenon becomes rather embarrassing when we have to assess large values such as millions or billions, especially when we are talking about money. Very quickly, these values become blurry. We know that a billion is more than a million, but we don’t exactly “see” the difference, because it’s “far”: and for many, a billion (1,000,000,000) is instinctively ten times more. than one million (1,000,000). Which is false: because a billion is a thousand million!
And if you have trouble picturing the difference, there is a simple technique to “visualize” it. It simply consists of reasoning in time, taking the second as a unit. This transposition speaks volumes with money. So, assuming that 1 euro corresponds to 1 second, 1000 euros equals 1000 seconds. Or 16.6 minutes (1000/60). But the scale changes when we go to a million. Because 1 million euros then corresponds to 1,000,000 seconds, or 16,666.6 minutes (1,000,000/60) or 277.7 hours (16,666.6/60). That’s already a lot, but it’s more impressive in days: because it corresponds to 11.57 days (277.7/24). And the difference is even more spectacular when we go to the billion. Because 1 billion euros corresponds to 1,000,000,000 seconds, or 16,666,666 minutes (1,000,000,000/60), 277,777.7 hours (16,666,666/60), 11,574 days (277,777.7/ 24) or 31.71 years (11,574/365).
In a simplified summary, without calculations and with rounded numbers, remember that by reasoning in time, a thousand euros corresponds to 16 minutes, a million euros corresponds to 11 days and a billion euros corresponds to 32 years. Do you “feel” the difference better? Million and billion are not at all in the same orders of magnitude. This should help you better understand values when we talk about millions and billions in state budgets, product sales, company valuations, subsidies or sports salaries.
And what goes for euros obviously works with all other units, whether kilometers, tonnes, bytes or even individuals. This is particularly the case in high-tech, when we talk about gigabytes (GB or billion bytes) and megabytes (MB or million bytes), gigahertz (GHz), megapixels (Mpx) in sensors photo or transistors in chips, for example, or number of subscribers or views on social networks. Also, if you have trouble “seeing” large numbers like a real math expert, do not hesitate to use this temporal representation whenever you want to evaluate millions and billions, in any field whatsoever.