A View from the Back of the Envelope top

A million dots on one page
Lots of dots
Getting a feel for big numbers
A dot for every second in the day

You can use lots of dots to help grasp large numbers. Here are 103 x 103 = 106 (1,000,000 ; one million) dots.

The dots are dots. The small squares are 101 x 101 = 102 (100) dots. The big squares are 10 x 10 of the small squares, so 104 (10,000) dots. To get a million (106) we need 102 of the big squares. Depending on how wide your window is, that's 10 x 10, or 5 x 20, or 4 x 25, or 3 x 33 plus 1. As below...

A View from the Back of the Envelope
Comments encouraged. - Mitchell N Charity <mcharity@lcs.mit.edu>

Notes:
  See `Lots of dots'.

Doables:
  See `Lots of dots'.
  Add "10", "20", etc markers so looong table doesnt just blur.

History:
 2001-Apr-14   Changed layout.
 1998.Mar.15   Created.