Carlos Zambrano and a High School Math Student’s Help in Understanding the Nation’s Budget Deficit

Last night I attended a bowling party commemorating my daughter’s 12th grade graduation class.

Towards the end of the party, I started chatting with one of her classmates, who told me about his interest in math, and how he intends to continue with his math studies next year in college.

I asked him a question my friends and I set about pondering a couple of weeks ago, sitting in Wrigley Field, regarding our nation’s staggering deficit which now exceeds 14 trillion dollars. Between sips of $7.00 Old Style, we tried to get envision how large a sum is 1 trillion dollars.

(We didn’t get anywhere an inning earlier trying to rationalize Carlos Zambrano’s huge salary – failing that, we decided to move on to this more graspable issue.)

I posed the following question to the young man, my daughter’s fellow high school graduate:

“If you took the entire playing surface of Wrigley Field – the entire infield and the outfield – and you were to drop one trillion one dollar bills onto it, how high would this pile rise, presuming there was a way to make the pile evenly proportioned?”

My daughter’s friend hesitated for a moment, and then he told me that he thought that this question was solvable.

A few hours later I received his answer, via email.

“Hiya Mr. Glasser,
This is Ella’s math-y friend from the bowling party today. Did some basic number crunching. Figured that the federal deficit would, on average, be about 5’6” high on Wrigley Field. Not quite six feet, but pretty darn close. That’s pretty darn shocking, though! Yikes. Used Yahoo! Answers to figure out the square footage of Wrigley Field and a Dollar Bill, and then I just did some basic arithmetic—nothing fancy.”

Twenty minutes later, a follow up email:

“Mr. Glasser. Oh, crap. You know what? I used 15 bil, not 15 tril. My bad. Redid it with 14.3 trillion, and literally got a mile. 5280.14534 feet.”

My response:
“Wow! Does that mile cover the federal deficit or just 1 trillion dollars?”

Him:
“So yeah, you divide that by 15 to find 1 trillion. So it’s like 369 ft per trillion.”

Me:
“Wow! So it would be a bit over one football field high per trillion? And the federal deficit would equal around a mile. To help me visualize this, how many Willis Towers in a mile?”

Him:
“Yeah, man, that’s about right. Three Willis Towers in a mile.”

It’s been nearly thirty years since I have possessed the math skills to come close to confirming this young man’s facts. That being said, I find it reassuring to see how some of today’s high school graduates do indeed possess fabulous problem solving math skills.

Of course, the sobering reality is his conclusions, presuming he is correct. Think about it: our federal deficit, with dollar bills evenly covering the playing field of Wrigley, would rise the distance of three Willis Towers.

Damn those Cubs. If they could have fielded a better team, I wouldn’t be thinking about such stuff while attending their games.

Sad Note:
With great sadness, I acknowledge the death of a wonderful member of our East Rogers Park community, Larry Tobiasz, 64, after a courageous battle with lung cancer. Larry was one of the truly great plumbing contractors in this neighborhood and in the City of Chicago – he was the kind of guy you could call during that proverbial Saturday evening plumbing emergency. Larry possessed a great sense of humor, exhibited great pride in his work (I remember him showing me photos of his incredible home remodeling project) and he had tremendous integrity.

We extend our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Sharon Kozak. Larry will be deeply missed by us all.

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