UCLA Olga Radko Endowed Math Circle

4/7/2019 -- Beginners: How big are big numbers really?

We've all seem some pretty big numbers in our day. Sure maybe you've seen a 81, a 104 or maybe even (if you are very worldly) 3841. But, jut how big are big numbers really? How big is a number like 52!, the number of ways to arrange the number of cards in a 52 card deck? What about the number of times you would have to flip 200 coins before you got all heads? Can you even say which one is larger? Today we'll answer this question and more, by introducing the logarithm, a function that is extremely useful for making sense of the super massive.

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