Seven years ago, in May 2012, I posted “One Two Three”, in which I wrote about my Arithmomania. It was Arithmomania then and it was Anatidaephobia in my last post. I am a psychological mess!
Arithmomania: a morbid compulsion to count.
I wrote at the time that I was unhappy with the word “morbid” in the definition as that means an “abnormal and unhealthy interest in something” and counting isn’t unhealthy. It can be fun.
While surfing the internet I came across a site that’s new to me called “Infoplease” and saw that someone had asked the question, “How long would it take to count to a million?”
The answer to that question, began with this absurd statement:
Let's suppose, for the sake of the argument, that on average you could count one number every second.
Then, it went on to say that counting at a rate of 60 numbers per minute, it would take roughly 11½ days to count to a million.
That opening statement is ridiculous because there comes a point relatively early when you just can’t count one number every second. Eventually, the more you count, the numbers become too long and with too many syllables to say in just one second.
There are only ten one-syllable numbers and just twelve with two syllables. Beyond a thousand, almost all numbers have at least seven syllables while most have eight or more: 100,001 has 7 syllables and 677,567 has 19.
Being alone all day, I’m able to do things I would be far too embarrassed to do in company. For God’s sake, grow up! I’m trying to be serious here.
Out loud, I counted to 100 as fast as I could while still being intelligible, timing it with a stop watch. It took me 40.89 seconds. On a different website I read this be done in 25 seconds but in my opinion, that’s baloney. The key word is “intelligible”.
It’s obvious when counting, that as the numbers increase they tend to contain more syllables and so take longer to say.
The only person ever to have been recorded counting to a million and therefore the world record holder, is Jeremy Harper of Birmingham, Alabama in the USA. In 2007, he counted for 16 hours every day taking 8 hours off for eating and sleeping. It took him 89 days.
That’s around 11,000 numbers a day or about 700 an hour. Overall, he counted at a rate of 11.7 numbers per minute. Counting at that rate, it would take him 243 years to count to a billion, defined these days as a thousand million. In reality, it would take longer than that as you will see.
I don’t think most people realise how much bigger a billion is than a million. Even if it really were possible to count at the rate of one number a second, it would take nearly 32 years to count to a billion.
In 2024, Elon Musk, cemented his position as the richest man in the world with cash and assets worth more than $486 billion. That is more that the combined wealth of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerburg, the second and third richest people in the world.
If Musk cashed in all his assets and collected the cash in 4.8 billion, $100 bills and then counted them at a steady rate of 200 bills an hour, it would take him more than 2,700 years of continuous counting (no toilet breaks) to make sure that it was all there.
He might want to put all that money all into a nice, safe building society deposit account with no risk and so would have no financial worries ever again. With only a 2.5% interest rate, he would receive about 12 billion dollars a year or $390 every second.
But is he happy?
You might assume that if it took Jeremy Harper 89 days to count to a million, it would take 89,000 days, or 244 years, to count to a billion. But, say 777,777,777 out loud. That number has 35 syllables and when I say it aloud in a conversational way, it takes me just over six seconds.
I wanted to find out how “numbers per minute” decrease as the numbers get larger and take longer to say. One morning, certain that I was alone and no one could see or hear me, I locked the doors and spent four hours counting out loud. Putting it another way, I spent four hours talking to myself.
I tried to imagine that I had at least 8 hours counting ahead of me and I would be doing the same thing tomorrow and for many days to come. Consequently, my counting was steady and relentless.
(Don’t you wish you could have been there?)
With a time scale of hundreds of years, the first ten thousand numbers are irrelevant. They could be said in one day.
From 10,000 to 100,000 I averaged 27.3 numbers per minute (n.p.m.).
100,000 to 1,000,000 - my average n.p.m. is 11.2
1,000,000 to 5,000,000 - my average n.p.m. is 6.9
5,000,000 to 1 billion - my average n.p.m. is 6.1
The following table shows that it would me 294 years to count to a billion. Someone else might do it faster or slower than me.
Range | Numbers | n.p.m | Hours | Years |
10,000 - 100,000 | 90000 | 27.3 | 55 | < 1 |
100,000 - 1,000,000 | 900000 | 11.2 | 1339 | < 1 |
1,000,000 - 500,000,000 | 499000000 | 6.9 | 1205314 | 138 |
500,000,000 - 1 Billion | 500000000 | 6.1 | 1366120 | 156 |
Total | Years: 294 |
That’s 294 years of non-stop counting but if I were to copy Jeremy Harper’s practice of only counting for 16 hours a day, it would take me 392 years.
It would actually take me longer than that as I would only be prepared to count for 8 hours a day (I do have some kind of life, you know) and so counting to one billion would take me at least 490 years.
However, on a matter of principle, I absolutely refuse to count at the weekends or on Bank Holidays. Also, I insist on having four weeks holiday every year. That means I will only be counting for 233 days a year.
As there's no rush, I’ll probably start some time after Christmas, maybe on January 3rd. Then, the day I shout out, “One billion!” will be on September 22nd 2788 and that’s a Thursday, 769 years from now.
If you’d like to see Jeremy Harper finish his count to a billion, click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aqCC2PVNcA
