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What is Order Of Magnitude?

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Order of magnitude is a rough measurement technique that considers things in powers of ten. Anything less than a power of ten is rounded down for the purposes of comparison. For example, revenue of $1 million and $4 million would be considered the same order of magnitude. Revenue of $60 million dollars is one order of magnitude more than $1 million. A way of thinking about order of magnitude is that it only considers how many zeros a number has in it. Any two numbers that have the same number of zeros are the same order of magnitude.
Examples: Order of Magnitude
start
end
order of magnitude
1
9
0
10
99
1
100
999
2
1000
9999
3
10,000
99,999
4
100,000
999,999
5
1,000,000
9,999,999
6
10,000,000
99,999,999
7
100,000,000
999,999,999
8
1,000,000,000
9,999,999,999
9
Overview: Order Of Magnitude
Type
Definition
An approximation technique that reduces numbers to their powers of 10.
Value
Making approximations of big numbers where precision is meaningless or exact values are unknown.
Assigning numbers to general categories for the purposes of comparison.
Often used to compare the speed of algorithms and estimate the complexity of problems in science, particularly computer science.
Examples
An economy car costs two orders of magnitude more than a bicycle.
Interstellar space travel is many orders of magnitude more complex and costly than landing on the moon.
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