But here is a more interesting series:
October 3, 1000
February 10, 1024
April 5, 1024
June 4, 1296
November 3, 1331
December 3, 1728

What is the next date in this series?
How many such dates are there with four digit years (from 1000 AD to 9999 AD)?

As you can see above, some of these dates are only a few months apart. Others are many years apart. What is the longest gap between dates, again limited to four digit years?

Post your guess/answer in the comments and we’ll see who gets it right first. I know this is a little different than our normal number freaking, but I thought it was a fun puzzle.

Today I want to expand that a little further, to show how truly massive that number is.

One of the things we discussed yesterday was that you could have spent $1 million every single day since Jesus was born, and still not have spent $1 trillion. That statement ignores the compounding of interest, however.

So, let’s add interest the equation. Pretend you were given $1 trillion on the date of Jesus’ birth, which we will say was 733,500 days ago. This money was put into a bank account that paid 6% per year. How much could you have withdrawn every day since then? Before you read on, please try to formulate a guess, so you can see how close you are.

I will even reproduce my little picture of $1 trillion so that you don’t accidentally read ahead.

Are you ready for the answer? It is $164,383,561.6438 per day! Interestingly enough, if you just round up to $164,383,561.65 you will end up running out of money after 400 years, and if you round down to $164,383,561.64 your nest egg will actually grow over time. That extra fraction of a penny makes a huge difference over 2000+ years.

What could you buy with $164 million per day? You could buy everyone in the country a $.50 newspaper and still have $10 million left every day.

You could sign A-Rod to a 6 year contract, every single day, and still have a couple million left.

You could pay the annual salary of any major league baseball team not named the Yankees, every single day.

The $164 million represents interest on the $1 trillion. But, even just the interest on the interest is $27,000 per day. So, if you took one day off from spending, and put that money in a separate account, and it earned interest at 6% per year, you could hire an entry level accountant for 6 months, with the interest on the interest every single day.

I think this is an amazing example of the power of compound interest, and tomorrow I will share an even better one with you.

I would like to recast it a few different ways. For example, Jesus Christ was born something over 2000 years ago, although the exact date is not known. Let’s assume that December 25th, 2008 really was His 2008th birthday. This equates to approximately 733,422 days, depending on leap years, historical changes etc. (I simply assumed 365.25 days per year). Since that was 69 days ago, we are now at 733,491 days since His birth.

I’m going to round it off and call it 734,000 days. If you opened a business on day 1, and lost $1.36 MILLION every single day since then, you would have lost $998 billion, or basically $1 trillion.

Another way to think about it is that there are 300 million Americans (in round numbers). So, $1 trillion is just over $3,300 for every single American. That doesn’t sound as big, does it?

Or how about this? Assume your heart beats 75 times per minute, and that you live 75 years, which is roughly the average life expectancy in the United States. You would have to spend $338 per heartbeat to reach $1 trillion in your lifetime.

What do you think? Do you have a different way of getting your head around the concept of a trillion? Let me know in the comments if you do.

EDIT — A number of people told me they would like to see this type of thing as a separate category, so I’m filing it under number freaking instead.