Re: [math-fun] Explaining math to non-math people

Without further context, the Congresspersons comment could be perfectly reasonable. For example, if the indicator number was the ordinate of an exponential curve. On 12/30/2011 8:12 AM, Henry Baker wrote:

Someone who used to work at NSF once told me a (probably apocryphal) story about testifying to Congress, where he said that some indicator number had to reach 10^20 for a project to be successful, but that the current best indicator that the project had demonstrated to date was 10^10. One of the Congressmen then said -- without a trace of irony -- "then we're halfway there".