Is this a big number?


Free-form entry eg: '125000km', '1.5 million inches', '$67bn', '45000000 AUD', 100years', '123456789', '1 trillion', '1.5e6', '25 million kg'

Getting to Grips with Big

Stop worrying and learn to love big numbers

Numbers Astronomical and Beyond

IsThatABigNumber.com is about extending our number sense. We make comparisons that are (mostly) down-to-earth: populations of people and animals, national budgets, river lengths and so on.

But when we leave behind everyday experience and look at the kind of numbers you find in astronomy and in combinatorics, we come across vastly bigger numbers.

One strategy to grasp these numbers is to break them down into a series of levels, to see them as stupidly big aggregations of things that are themselves stupidly big aggregations of …  Here are some good clips illustrating this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgNDao7m41M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69cguFzZ_w

Landmark Numbers

Prominent and memorable numbers

How much do things weigh?

We like the attitude at cockeyed.com.

Take a bunch of everyday stuff (not just clothes) and weigh them. Why? Just to see how much they weigh! (and along the way maybe help internalise a sense of relative weights).

http://www.cockeyed.com/science/weight/weight_menu.html

Read all about it!

Is That a Big Number? - the book - is now available from all good booksellers.

"This is a fun and riveting book. Written in an accessible and engaging way, it is unputdownable." Frost Magazine

Click here to learn more about it.

Click here for Podcast: Andrew Elliott interviewed for New Books Network.

http://itabn.tumblr.com/post/138631317782/this-website