Centered Square Five
I recently discovered the Numberphile YouTube channel, and have been quite impressed with it. My favorite piece so far is this one:
I came across this essay on large numbers by Scott Aaronson recently, and found it fascinating. It pulls together concepts of large numbers, notation, Ackermann numbers, and Turing machines, in clear and concise fashion.
This is from late 2006, and you’ve probably seen it before, but somehow I missed it then, and I just can’t resist posting it. It’s pretty amazing, showing a level of innumeracy that I have a lot of trouble believing is real—even if it is.
Transcript of the call.
MP3 of the call.
Randall Munroe’s response to the whole thing.
It’s just crazy. A series of people who seem to have difficulty with the concept that 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars are different. I don’t think they’re pretending to have trouble, either… they seem to actually be unable to comprehend what the customer is saying.