My Life in Numbers displays real-time calculations using interesting statistics, fun facts and fascinating numbers. The website measures all sorts of events in many different ways. For example the amount of Google searches since the beginning of the day or since the beginning of 2013 or the amount of breaths an average person has taken since Christmas. Also some funny stuff: David Beckham’s earnings since the end of 2012. You can also create your own personal events like how much your hair has grown since you got out of bed or again how much David Beckham earned since you got out of bed.

Ideas for the classroom:

• put the website on the screen and just let students comment.
• ask students to write down a number and then write down the number in the same category one minute later: how much did it go up? how much did it increase in %? can you estimate what the number will be in one hour? look at the number one hour later: how is the estimation? how wrong (in %) are you?
• follow a category during one week on regular intervals and make a graph with the numbers, this can be a starter for linear and exponential growth.
• it’s an opportunity to practice reading large numbers.
• it’s an opportunity to make calculations with very large or very small numbers (the nanometers).

Katleen Vanden Driessche