Some, like mathematician Roger Antonsen, believe that numbers are the key to understanding the world. (Antonsen even gave a brilliant TED talk to explain this statement, which I highly recommend.) And there's a Reddit thread that vividly illustrates the point.
It started when platform user JustinMGH made a post, asking others to share facts and stats that sound like obvious exaggerations but actually aren't.
Immediately, people started delivering fascinating, weird, and even disturbing titbits of information, changing each other's perspective about everything around them, even if ever so slightly.
#1
The difference between million and billion is huge (relatively):
1 Million seconds = 11 Days
1 Billion seconds = 31 years
1 Million seconds = 11 Days
1 Billion seconds = 31 years
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260points
#2
The budget to send to the Curiosity Rover to the Mars is less than the worldwide military expenditure for thirteen hours
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246points
#3
Cleopatra was alive closer to the Moon landing than she was to the construction of the great pyramids.
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244points
#4
USA citizens privately own more firearms than all countries combined. Even more than most militaries.
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225points
#5
Pocahontas and William Shakespeare died less than a year apart less than 150 miles away from each other.
223points
#6
The original height of Mount Everest was calculated to be exactly 29,000 ft high, but was publicly declared to be 29,002 ft in order to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate.
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213points
#8
80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive WWII.
199points
#10
Neutron stars are so dense that if you dropped a gummy bear from one meter away it would hit the surface in a microsecond with the force of 1,000 nuclear bombs.
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181points
#11
The state of Maine has more Black Bears than black people.
174points
#12
Vatican city has a population of 2 popes per 1 square kilometer.
172points
#13
More silent films have been lost than saved
We live in an era where everything is saved, and it's hard to imagine such a massive loss of creative material. Plenty of films are lost, as late as the 1970s too.
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169points
#14
Monsters Inc was released closer to the fall of the Berlin wall than to the present day.
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164points
#15
All the ants in the world weigh about the same as all the people in the world.
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145points
#17
You could walk from North Korea to Norway and only pass through one other country.
Also, your feet would be a little sore.
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140points
#18
Radio astronomer here! You exert more energy when you unfold a single piece of paper than we have collected in *all* the radio waves we have *ever* collected from outer space.
134points
#19
In a room with 23 people there is a ~50% chance that 2 people share a birthday
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111points
#20
According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, every two days human beings create as much information as we did from the dawn of time until 2003.
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103points