The magic of mathematical intuition - David Bessis

You don’t really need to think. You can see the answer in your head: 999,999,999. The answer is easier to picture than it is to pronounce. It seems obvious, and yet it wasn’t always like that. To someone living in ancient Rome, for example, it wouldn’t have been obvious at all. In classical Latin, the word billion didn’t exist (neither did million). To communicate the idea, the easiest thing would have been to call it the product of “a thousand times a thousand times a thousand.” A Roman during the time of Julius Caesar should have been able to understand that, even if it might have given them a bit of a headache. But if you had told them that you were capable of taking this number, subtracting one from it, and picture the answer immediately in your head, they wouldn’t have been able to follow. They would have taken you for some kind of math whiz. You’d be hard pressed to write 999,999,999 in Roman numerals. If Roman numerals are the only numbering system you know, 999,999,999 is much

You don’t really need to think. You can see the answer in your head: 999,999,999. The answer is easier to picture than it is to pronounce. It seems obvious, and yet it wasn’t always like that. To someone living in ancient Rome, for example, it wouldn’t have been obvious at all. In classical Latin, the word billion didn’t exist (neither did million). To communicate the idea, the easiest thing would have been to call it the product of “a thousand times a thousand times a thousand.” A Roman during the time of Julius Caesar should have been able to understand that, even if it might have given them