Some, like mathematician Roger Antonsen, believe that numbers are the key to understanding the world. (Antonsen even gave a brilliant TED talk to explain this statement, which I highly recommend.) And there's a Reddit thread that vividly illustrates the point.
It started when platform user JustinMGH made a post, asking others to share facts and stats that sound like obvious exaggerations but actually aren't.
Immediately, people started delivering fascinating, weird, and even disturbing titbits of information, changing each other's perspective about everything around them, even if ever so slightly.
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The difference between million and billion is huge (relatively):
1 Million seconds = 11 Days
1 Billion seconds = 31 years
And with all the billionaires in the world, we're still letting people go hungry, still letting people die because they can't afford health-care. And the list goes on and on
I know, I don't know what kind of illusion those people live in
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Comes up a lot these days when we talk about Billionaires and Millionaires. A Million dollars and I could retire. A Billion dollars and you could retire 1000 people just like me. 100 billion? Well that's 1oo,ooo people who would never have to work again. That's how math works.
To clearify, the word "billion" is defined differently, depending on where you are (not the translation between languages though, for instanace a billion translates to "1 Milliarden" in German).
It may be 1,000 or 1,000,000 times a million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales 1300px-ESc...eb-png.jpg 
That’s exactly what bothers me a lot. In Czech language, billion is (similar as in german) “miliarda” and “bilion” is 1000x larger. Causes large amount of ambiguity 🙄
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If you had a billion pounds/dollars/yen/etc and spent 10,000 every day, it would take over 270 years to spend it all
Are we talking a billion as a thousand million, or a million million. Also a big difference
US billion = 1,000 x 1,000,000, UK billion = 1,000,000 x 1,000,000. I'm sure it was brought down to make billionaires so multiple-millionaires could feel big.
Same difference to a thousand seconds. Which is about 16 and a half minutes
And that's only for the scummy American billion that everyone has seemed to adopt. Used to be 10 10's a hundred, 100 100's a thousand, 1,000 1,000's a million and a 1,000,000 1,000,000's was a billion. But no that logical progression was too complicated so we got the US billion of 1,000 million and now we're stuck with it.
Could even be longer. In the UK until relatively recently, a billion was one million millions. US always had it as one thousand million and that's now adopted worldwide.
And a trillion is 31,000 years. People throw those numbers around with abandon, but when you turn them into something less abstract (like time) $h!t gets real!
If you got in your car, drove the speed limit, and drove 8 hour a day, you would reach Mars in 66 years. The more you know (place NBC logo here).
my age right now: 195 months old 5,966 days old 143,207 hours old 8,592,422 minutes old 515,545,346 seconds old
The budget to send to the Curiosity Rover to the Mars is less than the worldwide military expenditure for thirteen hours
Cleopatra was alive closer to the Moon landing than she was to the construction of the great pyramids.
I’ve heard this one a hundred times and it blows my mind every single time… what a history
USA citizens privately own more firearms than all countries combined. Even more than most militaries.
Pocahontas and William Shakespeare died less than a year apart less than 150 miles away from each other.
Barbara Walters, Anne Frank, and Martin Luther King Jr were all born the same year.
The original height of Mount Everest was calculated to be exactly 29,000 ft high, but was publicly declared to be 29,002 ft in order to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate.
1 in 2 Australians will get skin cancer in their lifetime
Neutron stars are so dense that if you dropped a gummy bear from one meter away it would hit the surface in a microsecond with the force of 1,000 nuclear bombs.
The state of Maine has more Black Bears than black people.
This does actually appear to be more-or-less correct, depending on the estimation of the bear population and the accuracy of the first Maine demographic statistics which popped up in a quick web search. Also, with the same caveat, there seems to be approximately one black bear for every square mile of Maine.
Vatican city has a population of 2 popes per 1 square kilometer.
More silent films have been lost than saved
We live in an era where everything is saved, and it's hard to imagine such a massive loss of creative material. Plenty of films are lost, as late as the 1970s too.
Monsters Inc was released closer to the fall of the Berlin wall than to the present day.
All the ants in the world weigh about the same as all the people in the world.
Also, they work extremely hard and live only about 8 days, while turtles don't do shït and get to live 150 years. Let it sink in.
Nintendo existed at the same time as the Ottoman Empire.
You could walk from North Korea to Norway and only pass through one other country.
Also, your feet would be a little sore.
Radio astronomer here! You exert more energy when you unfold a single piece of paper than we have collected in *all* the radio waves we have *ever* collected from outer space.
In a room with 23 people there is a ~50% chance that 2 people share a birthday
According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, every two days human beings create as much information as we did from the dawn of time until 2003.
The same facts that BP has posted 20 million times before. This s**t has been posted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Annoying af
I try posting new articles and for whatever reason BP just won't publish them. Wonder how many people try and get the same results.
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9 US states have more cattle than people. Texas is not one of them due to being very populous but Texas has more cattle than there are people in 45 states and DC.
A light bulb, which is known as the Centennial Light, has been burning at a Livermore, CA firehouse since 1901. It is very rarely turned off, which accounts for its longevity, since turning bulbs off and on contributes to wear and tear. To put it in perspective, this bulb has been around longer than powered flight, and was shining all through the Chicago Cubs' notorious World Series drought.
The same facts that BP has posted 20 million times before. This s**t has been posted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Annoying af
I try posting new articles and for whatever reason BP just won't publish them. Wonder how many people try and get the same results.
Load More Replies... 9 US states have more cattle than people. Texas is not one of them due to being very populous but Texas has more cattle than there are people in 45 states and DC.
A light bulb, which is known as the Centennial Light, has been burning at a Livermore, CA firehouse since 1901. It is very rarely turned off, which accounts for its longevity, since turning bulbs off and on contributes to wear and tear. To put it in perspective, this bulb has been around longer than powered flight, and was shining all through the Chicago Cubs' notorious World Series drought.
