Can you distinguish numbers past 1000?

Question

I read somehwere, that most people are at a loss, if it comes to numbers past 1000. If Bush proposes a 3 Trillion budget, people just blink, but if the price for gas goes up by 15 cents, people go nuts. What is your treshold for highest number you can imagine?

Answer 1

783,927,654.60 dollars. i also found that same thing. when people are talking high number with me and they say like a project is going to cost 1.5 million dollars, i say, well do we have that? i don't really THINK about it

Answer 2

I'd hope most people can grasp numbers in the thousands. Not hard to picture -- that's how many went to your high school or how many people attend a college basketball game. That's not terribly abstract.

I think the truth behind your point is more like numbers above a billion -- the kind of numbers people just do not experience in every day life, where they do not see groups of discrete objects in such numbers.

But there's nothing dumb about that. Huge numbers don't have much of an impact on your mundane everyday life. Whether the US budget is 3 trillion or 2.8 trillion, it makes no direct difference in the taxes you pay. The tax rates and your withholding are the same. People sort-of know that by experience. (The difference will be financed by bonds). But if gas goes up 15 cents you definitely are directly affected by the change, and you see it every time you are pumping gas in your car.

Answer 3

I can get to about $100,000, (what my wife earns) perhaps $145,000 (what my house costs), but that's about it