$50k and €30 are of the same order of magnitude.

This is offtopic honestly, but I'm curious if I've been using this phrase wrong for my whole life. Doesn't "order of magnitude" refer to steps of powers of ten?

$50000 vs €30. (or €42066.30 vs €30 if I normalize the currency) 5x10^4 vs 3x10^1.

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appreciatorBus 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You have it right, perhaps the original poster was referring to it in a more colloquial manner, in the sense that against 200 million in revenue, 50,000 and 30 are in the same ballpark?

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NoxiousPluK 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I took it as a joke about the USD/EUR exchange rate ;)

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SahAssar 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> in the sense that against 200 million in revenue, 50,000 and 30 are in the same ballpark

I don't understand how those are in the same ballpark? I thought saying something is in the same ballpark suggested that they are similar in scale, and the implication is that little-leauge does not play in the same ballpark as a NBA team. They are in the same category (baseball), but not at all the same level.

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liquidise 3 hours ago | parent [-]

At a big enough scale, previously large differences are effectively 0.

50k/mo is 600,000/yr vs 360/yr at 30/mo. Thats existential for a 1MM/yr company. Neither register on a balance sheet for a 1B/yr company. They are both closer to 0 than being a major cost.

	▲	SahAssar 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		But saying that 200 million and 30 are in the same ballpark is not true in 99.99% of contexts. Even 50k and 30 I would not say are in the same ballpark. I've worked for major corps and of course a cost saving of 50k/month would not register for the overall company but it probably would for my team. A saving of 30/month is probably not worth spending any considerable amount of time on in most non-personal contexts.