"...I thought that this sort of rescaling (converting $100 million to $3) was actually a rather good way of comprehending the vast amounts of money in the federal budget: we are not so adept at distinguishing easily between $1 million, $1 billion, and $1 trillion, but we are fairly good at grasping the distinction between $0.03, $30, and $30,000. So I decided to rescale (selected items in) the federal budget, together with some related numbers for comparison, by this ratio 100 million:3, to put various figures in perspective..." -- Terence Tao
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/the-federal-budget-rescaled/
