What is an Order of Magnitude? How big is an Order of Magnitude?

To say that something is an order of magnitude greater than something else means that it is 10 times greater. For example, if we say that value Y is an order of magnitude greater than value X, then Y=(10)(X).

As a real world example let's consider computer memory. If for example we have 1 MB of memory, and we expanded to 1 GB of memory, our new amount of memory would be three orders of magnitude greater than our original amount of memory.

1 GB = 1000 MB = (10)(10)(10)(1 MB)

Note: it is also often said that 1 GB is equal to 1024 MB. However, for the purpose of this article to illustrate orders of magnitude, we will consider 1 GB to be equal to 1000 MB.

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