I have a quick question about tables and numbers, can you help me out?

When it says “in thousands of dollars,” that means you multiply every number by 1000. So, the 2,731,651 is actually $2,731,651,000.

I’m doubting myself because of how ridiculous that number seems, but it’s how every table I’ve ever worked with was supposed to be read.

@bobbinhood That’s what I thought, but then I couldn’t believe the number was that huge.

What they’re saying is that each unit of the table entries represents one thousand dollars. If it said “5” that would mean $5000. Your confusion no doubt stems from the fact that the numbers are so large, raising the question of why the didn’t just use the actual figures in the first place?

I agree, @bobbinhood, some of those amounts look outrageous when you add three zeroes to the end. But others look ridiculous when you don’t. When you look at the smallest numbers, 29 and 97, they couldn’t really mean twenty-nine dollars and ninety-seven dollars.

Before I used this table, no matter where it came from, I’d be doing a little scouting around and looking for some common-sense corroboration that didn’t come from the same table.

@Jeruba I agree. Thanks, guys.

I’m glad everyone agrees. I was doubting my sanity for a minute there.

@Jeruba You’re certainly right about the little numbers being way too small without the thousand factored in.

Actually, @Jeruba, the “Other / other” line at $29,000 made a bit of sense. Twenty-nine thousand dollars in 1980 that didn’t fall into one of the other categorized buckets (even within “Other”).

What totally doesn’t make sense is the last “Other / other” line at over one hundred and twenty-eight *million” just “oh, you know… miscellaneous an’ shit” ... petty cash. Yikes. Let’s stimulate the DOE now.

@CWOTUS Yes, this table is quite suspicious.

Well, I don’t know who Martha Jacobs is (the author, according to Document / Properties), but at least the thing is signed and on a .gov website (Department of Education), so I’d imagine it’s at least legitimate. Whether it’s accurate or not… who knows? Maybe you could look up Martha at the DOE and get some assurance that it’s accurate, audited and all that.

Just remember the saying about government money – a billion here, a billion there, it starts to add up to real money. So when you consider how little a billion dollars is in government money, it stops seeming so ridiculous.

@CWOTUS That’s a good idea, should I do it? I will so call her up.

Look here.

@CWOTUS, I think you misread my comment. I said it didn’t make any sense if read as $29; it had to be $29,000. Yet some of the other numbers seemed outrageously high if multiplied by 1000. It almost seemed as if the table mixed its scales—some numbers being divided by 1000 and some not. That’s why I suggested independent verification; for instance, checking with one of the entities listed as a line-item to see what it said it had received in DOE funding for the year.

@Jeruba I don’t think I misread; I knew that you meant what you just explained. What seems incomprehensible is the scale of some of the increases – not that it’s a mistake or a mixed scale. But I know you don’t get involved in political threads, so I’ll leave it at that.

You were absolutely right that the numbers were outrageously high, though. But that’s the political issue that I’ll leave alone.

Ok, @CWOTUS. I do sometimes comment on political matters, but that wasn’t the issue here. “Actually” is usually a signal word for correcting someone else’s misapprehension.

Maybe I should have said instead, “Actually, I would never look for common-sense corroboration of anything that I see from the government in general, and the Department of Education in particular.”