numbers

Unpicking the Big in Big Numbers

It’s election season, and so big numbers are everywhere. Some of them may even be accurate, But as politicians promise £millions here and criticise £billion cuts there, distinctions between these numbers blur. I think of it as £M and £bn both amounting to what Daniel Kahneman might term the ‘prototypical image’ of a great heap of cash, with no further disaggregation required. But distinctions are important.