How Long Would It Take to Count to a Billion and Whats the Highest Anyone Has Counted?

[snooper2]

[MineralMan]

1. Depends. If I could count by 1000s, it wouldn't take all that long.

I remember counting to 1000 once when I was about six years old, just do do it. I was a weird kid, I suppose. But you can count by any interval, so I could count to a billion in the same amount of time, using increments of 1000.

BTW, when I was about 10, I once counted powers of 10 up to an astonishingly large actual number. Then, I ran out of names for the numbers I had counted to, so I stopped.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. You're As Weird As Me!

Quick story:
I'm riding home from meetings at corporate one day, and i'm doing squares in my head. I stumble on something with values where all the digits are one. (For instance, 1,111.)

You don't need a calculator to do the square, you only have to count. So, in the example you count up to the number of 1's, and then count back down. So, the square is 1234321. Works that easy up to 9 digits, and still works, but slightly more involved in double digits.

Anyway, i'm all jacked up that i found this fun pattern in numbers so i get home and tell my wife. Her reply: "You are such a geek!"
GAC

[MineralMan]

5. I did something similar with prime numbers, I remember.

It was during my high school days, and I actually derived some sort of formula for calculating the next prime number in the series from any prime number. I have no idea what that formula was any more, though, since being a teenager means forgetting pretty much everything when something more interesting comes along. I believe that it was a very cute girl a year younger than me that made me forget all that.

I figured out all sorts of number tricks. Most of them, I thought were original with me. Later, i discovered that none of them were original and they were all familiar ones. But, I did figure them all out on my own.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. One More, MM

Back in the band days i would do the sound check of the mikes with the prime number series or the Fibanacci series.

One day we're in a bar setting up around 7:30 pm and i do the prime number series, and over the 3 mikes i had checked, i got up to around 37.

A guy at the back of the room says "Hey, that's the prime number series!" I told him, "Sir, you are the kind of person i do that for!"

[MineralMan]

9. I just figured out what I had discovered way back then.

The Sieve of Eratosthenes. Since I was doing it in my head, I was limited in how large a prime number I could generate, of course.

Of course, I had never heard of Eratosthenes at the time, but I apparently duplicated the method from scratch.

I ended up abandoning mathematics at some point, about the same time I dropped out of my Electronics Engineering major.

However, I'd still recognize either series if you were doing a mic check. I'd probably have said something like that if I caught you doing it, too.

[ProfessorGAC]

11. Then You Also Are Ont Those People I Did It For!

Have a good rest of your day!

[ProfessorGAC]

3. Depends On How Fast, Of Course, But. . .

. . .since the numbers get bigger it's harder to count the numbers really fast when you start gettign to 5 and 6 digits. (Easier to say 21, 22, 23 really fast, but not so easy to say "one hundred fourteen thousand, two hunder and sixty four, than to say "21.)

At 8 hours per day, keeping an average pace of one unit per second, it takes around 34 and three-quarter days just to get to a million. So, just based on that, and being able to keep the one number per second pace up when working with 9 digit numbers, it would take around 95 years.

Sorry, i don't have time to do it right now.

[snooper2]

4. I take it you didn't watch the video LOL

Try, you can't count to a billion in your lifetime

[ProfessorGAC]

7. No, Straight Math

And since i'm living to 95, even by my numbers i can't do it in my lifetime.

Besides i was kidding around, Snoop!

[snooper2]

8. I thought you were being serial :) - The video was like 130+ years- ya got to sleep!

I didn't think it would take near that long but-

Math works...

one guy counted to a million took 89 days, streamed the whole thing live

[ProfessorGAC]

10. That's Longer Than My Number

I didn't actually time trying to count 6 digit numbers, so i doubt you could do one number per second. And, i did use 8 hours per day, which probably nobody could actually do.

I said 35 days, and it took that guy 89.

It is an interesting query though, ain't it?