Elizabeth Y. Toomarian

  • Director, Brainwave Learning Center, Synapse School & Research Associate, Stanford University
The human brain isn’t built to understand large numbers. OsakaWayne Studios/Moment via Getty Images

Brains are bad at big numbers, making it impossible to grasp what a million COVID‑19 deaths really means

The brain can count small numbers or compare large ones. But it struggles to understand the value of a single large number. This fact may be influencing how people react to numbers about the pandemic.

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