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Dots can help you grasp big numbers.

Here is 100 x 100 = 100 (1 ; one ) dot.. Here are 101 x 101 = 102 (100 ; one hundred ) dots... Here are 102 x 102 = 104 (10,000 ; ten thousand ) dots... Here are 103 x 103 = 106 (1,000,000 ) one million dots.

Here is A dot for every second in the day(includes a clock!) Here is A dot for each day.

Ideas...

How many year-dots old are you?
How many people-dots are in your building?
How many seconds-dots since you last ate?
If you live for 50 more years, how many day-dots is that?

You can color and group the dots...
If each dot is a day of your life, you can circle your first year of school, etc...
If each dot is n dollars, show how some budget is spent..
The age distribution of some population...

Graph paper is another way to play these games...

...
(Your suggestions and links are welcome.)

Links

Notes:
  Do browsers have any difficulty with the `million dots' page?
  Printers do 300 or 600 dots per inch.
    So 22 or 90 thousand per in2 (single dots separated by single dots).
    With 8 x 11 = 88 in2 paper, thats 2 or 8 million dots.
    So one could easily do a million-dot sheep of paper.

Doables:
  A dynamic generation service would be neat.  Colors, clumped&scattered, 
  Postscript or image for a million dot sheet of paper.

History:
 2001-Jun-20   Added Mpenny link.  Thanks to a reader!  Also VisNum link.
 2001-Apr-14   Added `A dot for every second in the day'.
 1998.Apr.29   Very slight appearance change.
 1998.Mar.15   Created.
               Thanks to [email protected] for the suggestion.