Monday, December 10, 2007

Scale of large things

We often hear "project A will cost $X million" or "something will cost $Y billion" on the news. Do we really understand how big these amounts are? Studies show that a group of people would spend a lot of time to decide how to spend a US$3000 budget, and relatively less on a multi million dollar budget. The reason is simple: we know how big US$3000 is. For your convenience, I've compiled a table of large monetary values. While I was doing this, I realized that the number of units sold is also a frequently mentioned figure on media. So without further ado,

Monetary
Source Date Thing US$ TW¥ CN¥
IMF thru Wikipedia 2006 Nominal GDP of the World 48.25 tr. 1559.77 tr. 356.82 tr.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of the U.S.A. 13.19 tr. 426.58 tr. 97.59 tr.
White House 2007 Outlays of the U.S. Federal Government 2.78 tr. 89.85 tr. 20.55 tr.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of the P.R.C. 2.64 tr. 85.50 tr. 19.56 tr.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of France 2.25 tr. 72.81 tr. 16.66 tr.
HM Treasury 2007 U.K. Government expenditure 1.20 tr. 38.70 tr. 8.85 tr.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of the R.O.C. 364.56 b. 11.79 tr. 2.70 tr.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of Singapore 132.16 b. 4.27 tr. 977.42 b.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of Vietnam 61.00 b. 1.97 tr. 451.12 b.
Forbes 2007 Bill Gate's net worth 59.00 b. 1.91 tr. 436.36 b.
Yahoo Finance 2007 Microsoft's revenue 54.07 b. 1.75 tr. 399.90 b.
Directorate-General of Budget, Accouting and Statistics, Executive Yuan 2007 Outlays of the R.O.C. central government 51.46 b. 1.66 tr. 380.62 b.
Yahoo Finance 2007 Microsoft's gross profit 40.43 b. 1.31 tr. 299.02 b.
Yahoo Finance 2007 Amazon's revenue 13.15 b. 425.14 b. 97.26 b.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of Brunei 11.56 b. 373.77 b. 85.51 b.
Apprentice 505 2006 Cruise line industry 10.00 b. 323.30 b. 73.96 b.
NY MTA 2007 Total operating budget of NY MTA 9.72 b. 314.09 b. 71.85 b.
Apprentice 504 2006 Americans spend this much on cereal 6.00 b. 193.98 b. 44.38 b.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of Madagascar 5.50 b. 177.78 b. 40.67 b.
Department of Budget, Accounting, & Statistics, Taipei 2007 Taipei government expenditure 4.39 b. 142.05 b. 32.50 b.
Yahoo Finance 2007 Amazon's gross profit 2.46 b. 79.53 b. 18.19 b.
Washington Metro 2007 Budget of 2007 1.89 b. 61.14 b. 13.99 b.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of Eritrea 1.16 b. 37.50 b. 8.58 b.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of Liberia 614.00 m. 19.85 b. 4.54 b.
Yahoo Movie 1997 Cumm. gross of the movie Titanic 600.79 m. 19.42 b. 4.44 b.
Yahoo Movie 2004 Cumm. gross of the movie Shrek 2 441.23 m. 14.26 b. 3.26 b.
Reuters thru Wikipedia 2007 Official list price of Airbus A380 319.20 m. 10.32 b. 2.36 b.
Taipei MRT 2006 Revenue of Taipei MRT 311.78 m. 10.08 b. 2.31 b.
Yahoo Movie 2003 Cumm. gross of X2: X-Men United 214.95 m. 6.95 b. 1.59 b.
NY MTA 2004 Long Island bus operating budget 100.60 m. 3.25 b. 744.04 m.
Department of RTS, Taipei 1988-2006 Per km cost of high volume lines (Taipei MRT) 89.58 m. 2.90 b. 662.51 m.
IMF 2006 Nominal GDP of Kiribati 70.00 m. 2.26 b. 517.72 m.
Taipei MRT 2006 Pre-tax profit of Taipei MRT 31.55 m. 1.02 b. 233.34 m.


Unit
Source Start End Thing Unit
ITWorld.com thru Wikipedia 2001/10/25 2006/1/15 Windows XP 400.00 m.
Sony thru Wikipedia 2000/3/4 2007/9/20 PS2 Worldwide 120.00 m.
Wikipedia 2001/10/23 2007/10/15 All iPods 119.00 m.
Sony thru Wikipedia 1994/12/3 PS 102.49 m.
Wikipedia 1983/7/15 NES 61.79 m.
Motorola thru Wikipedia 2004/11/8 2006/7/18 RAZR V3 50.00 m.
Nintendo thru Wikipedia 1990/11/21 SNES 49.00 m.
gamecubicle.com thru Wikipedia 1985/9/13 Super Mario (All-stars excluded) 40.24 m.
GameDaily Biz thru Wikipedia 2000/10/26 2007/9/13 PS2 US 39.10 m.
Nintendo thru Wikipedia 1996/6/23 2005/3/31 Nintendo 64 32.93 m.
Wired thru Wikipedia 1988/10/29 Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) 29.00 m.
Xbox.com thru Wikipedia 2001/11/15 2006/5/10 Xbox 24.00 m.
Nintendo thru Wikipedia 2001/9/14 2007/9/30 GameCube 21.66 m.
ownt.com thru Wikipedia 1988/10/23 Super Mario 3 (All-stars excluded) 18.00 m.
Punch Jump thru Wikipedia 2005/11/22 2007/9/30 Xbox 360 Worldwide 13.40 m.
Nintendo thru Wikipedia 2006/11/19 Wii 13.17 m.
GamePro thru Wikipedia 1998/11/27 Dreamcast 10.60 m.
IGN thru Wikipedia 1998/4/1 StarCraft 9.50 m.
GameDaily Biz thru Wikipedia 2005/11/22 2007/9/13 Xbox 360 US 6.30 m.
Sony thru Wikipedia 2006/11/11 2007/9/30 PS3 5.59 m.


Note: Using the following exchange rates
US$ = TW¥ 32.33
GB£ = US$ 2.03947
US$ = CN¥ 7.396

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