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.