There are probably a few poor lost souls out there who have never heard of xkcd, so I am reposting a link to the most recent blag here as I found it simply awesome and wanted to share. XKCD is full of humour and interesting useful things including one of my favourites, the "What If?" and in particular, "Relativistic Baseball". Science can be fun.
This post discusses a fantastic little Chrome extension written by Glen Chiacchieri, that helps put some context to the numbers you read on the web. I agree with the author who said "I don’t like large numbers without context. Phrases like “they called for a $21 billion budget cut” or “the probe will travel 60 billion miles” or “a 150,000-ton ship ran aground” don’t mean very much to me on their own.". It is true and annoying and this little extension solves the problem nicely. This morning as I was reading through the daily news updates, I came across this: "…employing 1,500 people [≈ population of Christmas Island (nation)].". That part I highlighted in red is the added clarification from the Dictionary of Numbers and it is very helpful.
While 1500 is not a hard number to visualize, 17Billion is. So is $12 Trillion, the current approximation of the US Public debt. Isn't it helpful to know that $12 Trillion is also roughly equivalent to all the Fortune 500 revenues for 2011, but that is a whole other blog and conversation.
Anyway, if you are a Chrome user, I recommend heading to the Chrome store and installing this extension. I found it useful. Here is a convenient link to take you right there. CLICK ME
I also highly recommend making XKCD one of your common bookmarks because, well, science should be fun.
Be awesome - Change the world.
