This article is about large numbers in the sense of numbers that are significantly larger than those ordinarily used in everyday life, for instance in simple counting or in monetary transactions. The term typically refers to large positive integers, or more generally, large positive real numbers, but it may also be used in other contexts.
Very large numbers often occur in fields such as mathematics, cosmology, cryptography and statistical mechanics. Sometimes people refer to numbers as being "astronomically large". However, it is easy to mathematically define numbers that are much larger even than those used in astronomy.
Read more about Large Numbers: Using Scientific Notation To Handle Large and Small Numbers, Large Numbers in The Everyday World, Astronomically Large Numbers, Computers and Computational Complexity, Examples, Systematically Creating Ever Faster Increasing Sequences, Standardized System of Writing Very Large Numbers, Comparison of Base Values, Accuracy, Large Numbers in Some Noncomputable Sequences, Infinite Numbers, Notations
Famous quotes containing the words large and/or numbers:
“Women have no sympathy ... and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.”
—Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)