The Million Dot Project

Posted by Zach, 17 June 2012 · 427 views

This is something I've wanted to do for years, and I finally got around to it.

We all know a million is a large number, but exactly how large? Watch my new video and see for yourself:

Nathan Strum
Jun 17 2012 11:36 PM

I was trying to come up with a frame of reference for how much money Disney made in a typical year ($40.9 billion gross, for 2011).

There's a really good barbecue restaurant about 1.3 miles from work, that I've walked to before. If you divide Disney's revenue by that distance in inches - every single inch you walk is about $500,000. Or, two inches per million.

Which always makes me wonder, given that the college I work at was founded by Disney, why don't they give us more money? It's not like they aren't already spending money around here.

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Zach
Jun 18 2012 12:19 AM

Yeah, a billion is even more difficult to visualize. About a thousand times more. If someone wants to arrange dots in a similiar manner to this video, plan to spend thousands of dollars on photocopies, although a volume discount could probably be arranged.

If Walt were alive, I'm sure your school would be getting more money.

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Zach
Jun 18 2012 9:44 PM

Nathan Strum, on Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:36 PM, said:

Which always makes me wonder, given that the college I work at was founded by Disney, why don't they give us more money?

Thanks for the link to The CalArts Story. Some of the footage also appears in Donald in Mathmagic Land, which makes a nice tie-in to the mathematical nature of my video.