Know Your Numbers

What are the numbers that you have to know by heart? Why do you need to know them?

· What The Little Prince Did Not Know
· 100,000
· 30
· 20
· 10
· 1
· Reference

Let me start with a disclaimer. I am Asian American but not really good at math. So this article is not about how to do calculations. Instead, I want to share that there are a few numbers that every grownup must know. Asian or not.

What The Little Prince Did Not Know

First, a little anecdote about numbers and adulthood from an excerpt of Saint-Exupéry’s ‘The Little Prince’:

Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
If you were to say to the grown-ups: “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they would not be able to…