Numbers


A trillion. 1 followed by 12 zeros. It feels like a special number, doesn’t it? But isn’t Ben Thompson right when he says:
“It is nothing but a number, no different than 999,999,999,999 for all practical purposes, but we humans are not practical creatures: we attach importance to all kinds of silly things, round numbers chief amongst them.”

When I think of my daughter’s passage through the world of numbers (so far), I realize how quickly we assign special place to “round numbers”. Once upon a time, my daughter used to count like this: “twenty eight, twenty nine, twenty ten”. Now at seven, much older and somehow a teeny tiny bit wiser, I realized her understanding of numbers has improved… and changed.

The first time was when we bought a new car and I asked her to remember the new registration plate number. Inevitably, a random 4-digit number. Here’s how she responded:
“4 digits? No way I can remember that. A 1-digit number? Now that’s easy to remember. A 2-digit number? If it’s something like 50, yes; but not something like 43.”
50, but not 43. She’s apparently crossed that threshold to the world where round numbers are different. I guess I should be glad that she has memorized the 10-digit (random) phone numbers of my wife and me. Even if the intention of that feat was to eliminate the middleman and call us at office whenever she wants…

The second instance was this comic where the kids come up with a 0 to 10 scale to rate their teachers (who else?). I read out the ratings: “one”, “two point three” etc.
She: “What does “point” mean?”
Me: “In the case of two point three, it refers to a number between two and three.”
She: “But there’s no number between two and three.”
Aha! You only know integers, kiddo. And positive ones at that. And you don’t realize that “half a piece of cake” is a number between zero and one cake!

I hate to break it to you, munchkin, but there’s a boatload of numbers in your future: negative integers, rational and irrational numbers, imaginary and complex numbers… And no, Hobbes wasn’t right when he told Calvin that imaginary numbers include eleventeen and twenty ten. Happy counting!

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