If the US population is 3055 Million and each person was to

If the U.S. population is 305.5 Million and each person was to receive an equal portion of $319 Billion, how much money would each person get?

Solution

US population is 305,500,000. Money is 319,000,000,000. When numbers get this big it\'s helpful to use scientific notation, so population is 3.055 * 10^8, and money is 3.19 * 10^11. Then we can forget about exponents for the moment, and

1) 3.19 / 3.055 = 1.044

To divide exponents, just subtract, so

2) 10^11 - 10^8 = 10^3

So each person would get 1.044 * 10^3 dollars, or $1044.