numbers

I have a friend who is unusually quick of numbers.. not a Shakuntala devi type but somehow he would cut them up, juggle around and come out with a new perspective. He used to be dreaded in those class presentations we so often had as a part of our MBA curriculum. When you try to mash up a presentation within a few minutes to meet the deadline after having played Quake and counterstrike the whole night, there are bound to be loose ends. But if it happened to be of a numerical nature with this guy present, he would make your life miserable. I kind of envied his ability to pick these out..

Now why did i remember this guy suddenly.... Oh yes!!!
They say there are 3 kind of lies. Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics....
Cool isn't it? I have always agreed.. Nothing is more malleable or ductile than numbers if you know how to work with them. I was watching this lecture from TED titled "A powerful idea about teaching ideas" by Alan Kay. In the last minute of his talk, as closing remark he says, getting 5 or 50 mn of these $100 laptops is not enough to change the world. We need mentors to teach those children in 2/3rd world countries and in their absence technology has to fill the gap. For this we need to develop new interfaces and the cost of this would be a $100 Mn.

Now the fun begins. He says

"sounds like a lot but it is literally 18mins of what we are spending in iraq,we are spending 8bn a month, 18 min is a hundred million..100 million dollars, so this is actually cheap"

I was simply impressed by the way he put the thing in perspective. A simple trick, a simple comparison with something bigger.

But I spent the next 10mins cracking it. 100 mn worked out to 3/8 days, which is 9 hours, which is 540 mins. And i was happy that I have found a mistake.. and that reminded me of this friend and our presentations.

But as it turns out Alan was not really wrong.. take a look again at what exactly he said... What he meant was 18mins worth of spendings every day for a month.. that settles my problem because it would mean 18min X 30 = 540 mins

Having figured it out.. i was happy again.. n quite sure i havent suddenly started developing mystical power over numbers :)