Landmark Numbers - Miles Kodama
You are awash in numbers. You read them in news articles, hear them in conversations, ponder over them in textbooks. The half-life of carbon 14 is 5700 years. The cruising speed of a Boeing 747 is 900 kilometers per hour. The diameter of a Covid-19 particle is 80 nanometers. Your response to this torrent of numbers could be to let it flow past without leaving much impression on your brain. But you can do better. If you want to respond more intelligently to any number, a productive first step is usually to decide whether it’s big or small. This is more than a matter of checking the number of figures since what counts as big clearly varies with context. Ten mass extinctions is a big number whereas ten grains of sand is not. In order to tell what “big” means in a given context, you need a point of reference to anchor on, a landmark number with which to find your bearings.(1) (1)I’m borrowing the term “landmark number” from standup mathematician Matt Parker, who got it from economist Tim H
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