Orders of Magnitude Errors

This cluster revolves around comments correcting or mocking numerical mistakes involving orders of magnitude, particularly confusions between millions and billions or factors like 1000x off.

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Keywords

stlouisfed.org WALCL wikipedia.org magnitude orders magnitude order magnitude orders million 10 trillion 000 billion order

Sample Comments

wonnage Aug 28, 2021 View on HN

I think you meant million instead of billion (ironic in a thread quibbling over orders of magnitude)

andrewmcwatters Feb 14, 2023 View on HN

That's two orders of magnitude!

the8472 Nov 28, 2015 View on HN

I'm pretty sure that the point here is order of magnitude, not differences after the comma.

halfdan Jun 25, 2019 View on HN

They were only off by a couple orders of magnitude.. 10 vs 1000000000 is easy to confuse.

jahnu Mar 25, 2021 View on HN

Closer to a hundred million fold :)

manmal Nov 14, 2019 View on HN

I see „millions“ on the scale, so maybe you meant billions?

jacquesm May 1, 2022 View on HN

You're off by a factor of 1,000.

dragonwriter Apr 20, 2015 View on HN

Like six orders of magnitude matters...

adrianN Apr 12, 2018 View on HN

You're off by a factor of 1000, I think.

seanmcdirmid Aug 8, 2019 View on HN

Maybe you meant millions instead of billions?