what is an ‘order of magnitude’?

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Answer 1

number of digits.

so 1 and 10 are 1 order of magnitude appart since 10 has 1 more digit than 1.

10000 and 20 are 3 orders of magnitude different.

etc.

since the difference is so big, it doesnt really matter if we are talking about 20 or 30, its still 3 orders of magnitude.

mathematically it is round(|log_10(a)-log_10(b)|), but you can easily free-hand it without messing with logs, and its gennerally just an approximation