Here is Today

http://hereistoday.com/

I always get a little annoyed/weirded out by these kinds of time comparisons because to me the underlying message is, "Today is not that big of a deal. Get over it." It's similar to the "There are starving kids in Africa" argument for why your problems aren't that important. Yes, I know that my problems (or a 15-year old's problems) are not that dramatic in the larger scheme of things and that many of the things I'm pre-occupied with today will be relatively insignificant by the end of the year, the decade, etc. But that doesn't mean those things aren't real and important to me in this moment. It diminishes and invalidates someone else's emotions to tell them, "So what? In geological time, you're invisible." Everyone else is invisible too, but that shouldn't make them any less important or worthy of our love and attention.

But on to the math. What's cool about this interactive graphic is the proportionality and evolution of the part versus the whole. "Today" remains the numerator, but the denominator changes and our concept of "today" changes as a result. Seems like an interesting way of thinking about and understanding fractions, proportions, percents, and relative size. I think it would be interesting for kids to create or think about their own life maps in this way. What does today look like in comparison to your entire 15-year old life? Thinking about an important time period in your life, what is its relative size compared to today? Compared to an different time period in your life? It also feels like there's something interesting in there around fractions greater than 1--your life thus far is 1, so what will your 20 year old life look like?