Math Reflection

     The infographic article "Big Numbers count", I was able to better understand the concept of larger numbers and how we apply them in our daily lives. There should be no way, under any normal circumstances, would a person ever be required to learn numbers that range from trillions. The numbers are just too large to be important to us, however the articles begs to differ.



     The article helpfully presents it's readers with examples of large numbers that are present in our everyday lives. For instance, I never thought 1.8 trillion pennies could fit inside the empire states building, but I wasn't quite surprised by the fact that 1.8 trillion pennies have not even been printed in the world. But what caught me off guard was that Googol (10 to the power of 100!) was more than the number of visible atoms in the game, but the number is not big enough to match the possible different chess games. Though these are trivial facts that many could say are for the birds, but these are just a few facts listed on an article that is less than 10 paragraphs long. It is hard to even imagine what kind of "Big Numbers" are present or even dictate our every day life. In the cases of our security, big numbers seem to dictate our life. Encryption has become the ideal means of security and encryption depends on big figures that can not be broken down.

     Yes, the article seems trivial at times, but personally I felt I understood the pivotal role numbers play in our modern society. It reminds me that our world revolves around these big numbers without us even realizing. And it also allows the reader to view things in a different perspective. If you were asked how many ants there were in the world, you would just be able to say "a lot", however when you hear the actual number, which you should check out for yourselves, it almost shocks you and one takes a while to even process a number like that. The cool thing to consider sometimes is that a lot of these numbers or comparisons aren't possible simply because we don't have the amount in real life. For instance, we do not have 1.8 trillion pennies to fill the empire states building, so that raises an interesting question: Are numbers are mental entities or do they exist outside of our heads, as objects outside of our world, keeping in mind sometimes these objects don't actually exist?


Big Numbers Count: (http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/2015/03/how-big-is-a-number/?icn=RA&pos=2)