what is the highest number anyone has ever counted to
Joseph B. asks: How long would it accept to count to a meg? What about a billion? What'southward the highest anyone has ever counted?
Let's start with a million. The most commonly put frontward time it would take to count from ane to a meg out loud is about 23 days. This time frame is cited in a number of textbooks nosotros consulted and seems to have originated, equally far as we can tell, in a children's book suitably called, How Much is a Million by David Schwartz, which uses diverse examples to put into perspective how amazingly large numbers similar a million really are.
Given the figure existence cited in many a textbook and showtime appearing in a book literally titled How Much is a Million, you might assume information technology's reasonably close to correct. This is non the instance, still; this number significantly underestimates the actual time needed.
You lot encounter, Mr. Schwartz wasn't trying to come up with a real earth figure here, just a unproblematic exercise to accident child's minds without bogging them down in the details. Equally such, there are a couple assumptions being made in the "23 days" figure that plough out to arrive completely useless equally a real world estimate of how long it would take to count to a million. The first supposition is that the person counting would be able to do so 24 hours a day non-stop.
The second supposition is not quite so absurd on the surface: assuming that information technology would take simply about ii seconds on average to say each number. However, while certainly some of the everyman numbers tin can hands be said much faster than that and with little time needed for thinking, the bulk of the numbers for an average speed speaker would take slightly longer. For example, just consider how long information technology would take you to say out loud "i hundred xc-five chiliad five hundred 60-five".
Granted, when speed speaking, ane can easily hitting the 2 second marking, or fifty-fifty less. But when actually counting aloud for many hours on end, in that location is a sure level of physical and mental fatigue that goes along with it that makes it so speed speaking isn't really viable long-term. This is a marathon, non a sprint.
Then just how long would information technology really have someone to count to a million? Thanks to the efforts of one Jeremy Harper, we know the real world answer is somewhere in the vicinity of 89 days.
How did Mr. Harper figure this out? Well, he did information technology from June 18 to September 14, 2007 and live-streamed the unabridged thing online for everyone to watch. Harper, a software engineer whose dominate gave him time off to practise this, neither left his apartment nor shaved during the event; he recited numbers aloud (read off a computer monitor) for about an average of 16 hours every 24 hour catamenia for 89 straight days. This is about three.nine times longer than the oft' quoted 23 solar day approximate.
To be clear, we're not maxim this all couldn't be realistically done faster. Harper did have the occasional mini-break to break out in dance and things of this nature- he wasn't trying to ready a speed record to count to a 1000000. However, given his overall pacing when counting was reasonably quick, he dedicated the vast bulk of his waking hours to the task at mitt, and the large sample size of counting time we're dealing with here, this seems a pretty good ballpark figure to become with on the "How long does it accept to count to a million?" forepart.
Every bit for why Harper did information technology, he was looking to raise coin for Push button America (now The Ability Feel), a clemency that helps disabled people. Forth with raising about $12,000 for the charity straight (and getting them a lot of free publicity), Harper's achievement was recognised by no less of an authorisation than the Guinness Book of Records for being the highest number always counted to by a homo.
As you might imagine, the reality of spending nearly every waking moment for just shy of three months doing nothing but counting aloud was extremely mentally taxing according to Harper. As he noted, "The cameras that were on the whole time, I think, are really what kept me sane through the whole thing. If I would accept been locked in my apartment and counted to a one thousand thousand and nobody was watching, I would certainly have lost my mind. I would be like, you lot know, but out of it. "
Naturally, after hitting 1,000,000, he did what anyone would do after such a momentous achievement- the chicken dance.
As for the feeling of finishing counting higher than any person before, according to Harper:
at that moment, I lost – I simply kind of lost all command, and so, you know, I said the number. And so, it was just like a big bubble – information technology's kind of – just popping on me. At one time, I but said it and went with it. Y'all know, in that location'southward a weird emotion.
Now, within those 89 days, it took Harper about i,424 waking hours, or about 5.13 million seconds to count to a million doing almost nothing but counting. This would mean the real world boilerplate time to speak each number is roughly 5.thirteen seconds or near 2.half dozen times slower than Mr. Schwartz's ii second assumption. Granted, when we timed Harper saying some of the largest numbers here and averaged it out, the two second mark wasn't that far off, ending up around ii.half dozen seconds each. But in betwixt fourth dimension was needed to, yous know, breathe, requite the tongue, jaws, etc. a quick remainder, and take time to think nigh the next number on the screen before saying it, to avoid messing up.
So what about a billion? As no i has ever counted that loftier (and no private human e'er will unless we solve that whole bloodshed affair), it's difficult to go quite as accurate of a general ballpark figure. Seemingly the best way to do this would be to gather, say, 10,000 people and have them all take 100,000 number long segments out of the one billion number line and begin counting. Nosotros'd then only demand to add together up the total time and get a skillful rough estimate. But as we don't know 10,000 people willing to volunteer a couple weeks of their lives to such a job (unfortunately), we'll give information technology our best college try at an guess using Harper's numbers as a reference point.
On that note, as a sort of baseline, if we assume that the average time to say each number was the same as around what it is to count to one million, and assume the same very reasonable criteria every bit Mr. Harper used (counting roughly 16 hours per 24-hour interval with minor breaks here and at that place to swallow, drink, etc.), that would exist a whopping v,126,400,000 seconds or 1,424,000 hours of actual counting fourth dimension. Afterwards adding in the other eight hours of the day, this comes out to 89,000 days or roughly 244 years. (And if you're curious nigh the whole "no need to do annihilation else but count" scenario, that would exist roughly 59,333 days or about 163 years.)
But, of form, the fourth dimension to say each number would actually go up slightly as one ascended the number ladder. But how much? Considerably based on a few exercise runs we attempted on some of the larger numbers. Beyond it being much harder than you might expect keeping the large number in your head to increment appropriately (an issue that could exist avoided via reading the numbers off a screen as Harper did), the bodily average time to say something like "three hundred xx two million four hundred fifty 2 k seven hundred ninety 9" for us was around 4 seconds at a normal speaking pace. Given Mr. Harper averaged an additional roughly 2.5 seconds in betwixt each number, nosotros're looking at a slightly more than realistic number (though still with a large error bar) of effectually vi.5 seconds average for those larger figures.
The lower digits, of class, would be closer to Mr. Harper's 5.13 full seconds, but, as with counting to a 1000000, the upper end would come to boss pretty quickly. So only for an exceptionally rough ballpark effigy, nosotros'll get with a more realistic 6 seconds per number average, giving us effectually one,666,667 hours or 104,167 days (counting 16 hours per solar day) or roughly 285 years, assuming 1 had the do good to get to read the numbers off a screen. (Without this, nosotros're quite certain given our picayune practice runs with counting such big figures, that it would take much, much longer due to added interim seconds needed for focusing/thinking in order to keep the number in one'due south head… and stave off a mental breakup equally the years keep.)
And then how long would information technology have to count to a billion? We'll go with somewhere between 244-285 years counting for about xvi hours per day. If you happen to know 10,000 people who want to dedicate a couple weeks to counting, possibly we can come with a more authentic figure. 😉
If you liked this commodity, you might also enjoy our new pop podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well equally:
- How Do the Media and Police Guess Crowd Sizes?
- The Horse that Could Do Math: The Unintentional Clever Hans Hoax
- The Human being Who Accurately Estimated the Circumference of the Earth Over 2,000 Years Ago
- Why Do Books' Copyright Pages Have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 x?
- Why We Divide the Mean solar day Into Seconds, Minutes, and Hours
Bonus Fact:
- Now that'due south all counting to a billion with normal speaking pace. Just for fun, we were curious what the fastest speaker in the earth could do assuming the unrealistic scenario of being able to motor-rima oris all day. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the fastest talkers in the world can speak over 600 words per infinitesimal, such as Sean Shannon and Steven Woodmore. This is virtually four times faster than a normal speaking stride, meaning Shannon or Woodmore could count from 1 to a billion in virtually 71 years given the previous stipulations… you know, if they had nothing better to practice.
Expand for References
Source: https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2017/05/long-take-count-billion/
0 Response to "what is the highest number anyone has ever counted to"
Postar um comentário