This week Congress approved President Obama’s $3.5 TRILLION budget. So we wanted to know how many Americans grasp just how big a trillion really is. In order to do so, we took a poll of 1,001 Americans asking “How many times larger is a trillion than a million?” We also took our Econ4U team out in front of the White House to capture some live responses. How did people fare? Take a look at this video: (my favorite is the father who chastises his daughter and then gets it wrong himself!)
http://www.vimeo.com/4428480The poll respondents did a little better, if only because they were offered 5 choices. 21% got the question right. The answers were distributed in a manner that is about equal to what you’d expect from random guessing. Until Americans improve their financial education, the public won’t be able to comprehend these enormous budget issues that have so much impact on their lives.
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Haha, that father made me laugh. He went alpha-math professor on his daughter with the “it’s still in base 10″ argument, only to follow it up with his own einstein-esque calculation.
Introducing the kiloDirksen, in honor of the late Senator Everett Dirksen: “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Permalink: http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2009/05/introducing-the-kilodirksen/
there are one billion thousands in a trillion.
why do you not tell me the answer?
i have made comments twice before but you do not tell me if i am right or not.
there are 1,000 millions in a billion. then there 1,000 multiply 1,000 equals a trillion. 1,000 millions equal a billion. 1,000,000 millions equal a trillion.
Financial education has nothing to do with understanding the size of a trillion. It is a number and has everything to do with proper math education. To understand that there is 1000 millions in a billion is probably too difficult for many Americans. In fact, after teaching mathematics at a university I would venture to say that it is even too much to ask that they understand that there is a 1000 1000’s in a million.
Actually, 21% in a poll with 5 possible choices is not any better, because if everyone just answered at random, it would have been the same (20% chance for each answer to be picked)
Answer: Taxation is theft.
…Class dismissed
I think this is an exercise in futility.
Asking how much a trillion dollars is,
is like asking how many miles long a light-year is.
There may be some people that can give you the right answer, but no-one will know what their answer really means. There is no way for people to grasp the meaning of ‘one trillion dollars’.
I know a trillion dollars is one million, million dollars. But what that really means? Not a clue.
For the “Regular Joe”, it’s already impossible to really grasp how much ‘just’ one million dollars is:
If you make 50,000 a year, one million is twenty years of work! Twenty years! It’s already nearly impossible to fathom that, let alone a trillion dollars.
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