Large Number Formats
Large Number Formats
[A panel only with text. At the top there is four lines of explanatory text. Below that are 2 columns with 5 rows of number formats. Each numerical format is in red, with black text explaining the format below it.]
What the way you write large numbers says about you (Using the approximate current distance to Jupiter in inches as an example)
25,259,974,097,204 Normal person
25 trillion Normal person
25 billion Old British person
2.526x10 13 Scientist
2.525997x10 13 Scientist trying to avoid rounding up
2.526e13 or 2.526*10^13 Software developer
25,259,973,541,888 Software developer who forgot about floats
10 13 Astronomer
{∅,{∅},{∅,{∅}},{∅,{∅},{... Set theorist
1,262,998,704,860 score and four Abraham Lincoln

This comic shows what the way you write large numbers says about you. Different people use different methods to express large numbers. And this comic claims it can tell something about you based on the way you format large numbers. In this way, the comic is similar in idea to 977: Map Projections , where it was your choice of map projections that could tell something about you.
See the table below for each of the 10 different ways to express large numbers, plus the 11th mentioned in the title text.
The number used as an example is the approximate distance from the planet Earth to the planet Jupiter as of the release day of the comic on June 12th 2020, in inches (1 inch = 2.54 cm).
Two days after the release of the comic the following text could be found on Jupiter info on The Sky Live .
The distance of Jupiter from Earth is currently 640,084,108 kilometers, equivalent to 4.278698 Astronomical Units. Light takes 35 minutes and 35.0908 seconds to travel from Jupiter and arrive on Earth.
64,008,410,800,000 cm / 2.54 cm/inches = 25,200,161,732,283 inches - much less than the number used in the comic. But Jupiter's distance to Earth changes quite quickly, and was decreasing at the time of the release of the comic.
According to a graph of the distance as a function of time on The Sky Live, the distance on the release day was 643.1 million km. This will give 25.3*10 13 which the used number will round to.
The used number 25,259,974,097,204 is equivalent to 641.6 million km. On June 13th the distance is given as 641.7 million km in the graph on The Sky Live, very close to the number used. As this was the day after the release of this comic, it seems like Randall used a different distance than the exact one for the release day. He may have also used an average for June which would be 642 million km based on the average of the distance on June and July 1st.
[A panel only with text. At the top there is four lines of explanatory text. Below that are 2 columns with 5 rows of number formats. Each numerical format is in red, with black text explaining the format below it.]
What the way you write large numbers says about you (Using the approximate current distance to Jupiter in inches as an example)
25,259,974,097,204 Normal person
25 trillion Normal person
25 billion Old British person
2.526x10 13 Scientist
2.525997x10 13 Scientist trying to avoid rounding up
2.526e13 or 2.526*10^13 Software developer
25,259,973,541,888 Software developer who forgot about floats
10 13 Astronomer
{∅,{∅},{∅,{∅}},{∅,{∅},{... Set theorist
1,262,998,704,860 score and four Abraham Lincoln
