Northfielder quoted in 'Los Angeles Times'

A recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece about mistakes journalists have made with large numbers ("But who's counting?") quotes longtime Northfield resident Lynn Steen, St. Olaf professor emeritus of mathematics. "Generally people do not have sufficient experience with large numbers to have any intuitive sense of their size," he told the paper.

"They have no 'anchor' to distinguish a million from a billion the way they might 'feel' the difference between $10 and $10,000. So mistakes easily slip by unnoticed."