Suppose that you want to contact a company that you’ve found on the Internet, but you don’t know where it’s located, and the only contact information provided on the “About the Company” web page contains a phone number with the unfamiliar area code of 323. You could call them up, hope to reach a real person, and ask where the company is located. Or, you could look up what geographical region uses that area code. Using everyone’s favorite search engine, and within a few clicks, you see that 323 is a new area code for Los Angeles. Problem solved, and time to move on.
Suppose that you want to contact a company that you’ve found on the Internet, but you don’t know where it’s located, and the only contact information provided on the “About the Company” web page contains a phone number with the unfamiliar area code of 323. You could call them up, hope to reach a real person, and ask where the company is located. Or, you could look up what geographical region uses that area code. Using everyone’s favorite search engine, and within a few clicks, you see that 323 is a new area code for Los Angeles. Problem solved, and time to move on.
A few days later, you hear a factoid on the evening news that proclaims Afghanistan is slightly smaller than the state of Texas. OK, but if you’re from, say, Pennsylvania, and don’t know how large Texas is, the factoid is rather meaningless. For you, a comparison of the size of Afghanistan relative to the size of Pennsylvania would be a much better comparison. So, you hop on over to the CIA World Fact Book (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook) and the United States Census Bureau’s Quickfacts page (http://quickfacts.census.gov). According to the Census Bureau, Texas is roughly 5.8 times as large as Pennsylvania. Checking back at the CIA, Afghanistan is about 5.5 times as large as Pennsylvania. Aha! Another problem solved by the Internet!
Back in the old days (you know, like 1989), if you wanted to look up factoids, you’d reach to your bookshelf and…
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