[Feature photo above by Paolo Camera (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr.]
Half of our students were missing from this month’s homeschool teen math circle, but I challenged the three who did show up to wrap their brains around some large numbers. Human intuition serves us well for the numbers we normally deal with from day to day, but it has a hard time with numbers outside our experience. We did a simple yet fascinating activity.
First, draw a line across a page of your notebook. Label one end of the line $20 (the amount of money I had in my purse), and mark the other end as $1 trillion (rough estimate of the US government’s yearly overspending, the annual deficit):
- Where on that line do you think $1 million would be?
Go ahead, try it! The activity has a much greater impact when you really do it, rather than just reading. Don’t try to over-think this, just mark wherever it feels right to you.
The kids were NOT eager to commit themselves, but I waited in silence until everyone made a mark.
- Okay, now, where do you think $1 billion would be?
This was a bit easier. Once they had committed to a place for a million, they went about that much farther down the line to mark a billion.
Continue reading Pondering Large Numbers
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 