Putting numbers in human terms.
A dictionary takes words you're unfamiliar with and puts them in terms you're familiar with. Dictionary of Numbers takes numbers you're unfamiliar with and puts them in terms you can understand.
Dictionary of Numbers scans the web pages you visit looking for numbers it can understand. When it finds one, it will give you a human-understandable meaning for that number. For example, Dictionary of Numbers will take this sentence:
"The hurricane displaced over 100,000 people and cost an estimated $3 million in damages."
And turn it into something like this:
"The hurricane displaced over 100,000 people [≈ population of Aruba] and caused an estimated $3 million [≈ cost of 30-second Super Bowl advertisement] in damages."
It works for hundreds of units and has several thousand human-understandable explanations! If you don't quite understand the explanation, try hovering over it to see the other explanations for what this quantity is like; some will have more options.
Dictionary of Numbers also includes a search box for typing/pasting in numbers not in web pages, and will automatically suggest meanings for numbers you type in text boxes (beta feature).
This extension has the permission to "access your data on all websites" because it needs that to inject explanations into the page. It never does anything with your data.
If something is wrong, please tell me directly so I can fix it!
Version 1.6.4 (2017/08/02): Fix minor parsing issue.
Version 1.6.3 (2013/10/28): Fix minor styling errors.
Version 1.6.1 (2013/09/09): Speed improvements.
Version 1.5.8 (2013/08/27): Fix linux installs! :D
Version 1.5.7 (2013/08/12): Minor styling fix.
Version 1.5.6 (2013/08/08): Fix JavaScript console errors.
Version 1.5.5 (2013/08/03): Fix interpretation of 'mm Hg' as millimeters.
Version 1.5.4 (2013/07/29): Fix error that caused the extension not to work introduced in 1.5.3.
Version 1.5.3 (2013/07/28): Now remembers whether it was on or off last time you opened Chrome.
Version 1.5.2 (2013/07/18): More speed improvements.
Version 1.5.1 (2013/07/16): Speed improvements, especially on Google Images.
Version 1.5 (2013/07/14): Remove parentheses from comparisons to ease reading.
Version 1.4.8 (2013/07/12): Minor styling fix.
Version 1.4.7 (2013/07/07): No longer parsing 'W' as Watts due to too many false positives.
Version 1.4.6 (2013/06/26): Minor styling fixes.
Version 1.4.4 (2013/06/08): MASSIVE speed improvements and minor quantity parsing fixes.
Version 1.3.0 (2013/06/01): Now parsing shortened orders of magnitude on currency e.g. '$100k' will be parsed as $100,000.
Version 1.2 (2013/05/23): Fix bug with removing content in textareas and hopefully speed improvements.
Version 1.1.1: Disable as-you-type suggestions to stop modification of textareas.
Version 1.1.0: Don't show lower-end money amounts people are already familiar with.
Version 1.0.10: More minor styling fixes.
Version 1.0.9: Minor styling fixes.
Latest reviews
- (2023-03-20) himei Peppermint: Unfortunately still broken. Hasn't worked for any number i tried.
- (2020-11-09) P N: Doesn't work. Give no result on any page. That's a pity, it was a good idea.
- (2019-01-21) Torgefahr: I would really appreciate it if the same value was annotated only once in a given page. Also, an interactive element to temporarily disable entries which mess up the readability would be nice.
- (2018-12-28) skytomo: 動かない (doesn't work.)
- (2018-05-26) Alex Chandel: Been broken for a while.
- (2018-04-05) Victoria Reid: doesn't give any results. at all.
- (2017-09-26) Petya Szombathy: i'd like an added benefit of seeing US vs metric values
- (2016-12-23) Anza Hanif Athallah: Overall a great extension, however some of the entries are too technical for daily use. For example, "1 meter" is translated as "≈ wavelength of the lowest UHF and highest VHF radio frequency, 300 MHz", which is something most people (including me) don't understand or use in daily life. It would be better if other practical comparisons were added (like "1 meter ≈ length of a baseball bat" or something).
- (2016-11-12) Skipson: Works great and gives me a lot of things to compare too. The only thing I would like is a Domain Blacklist, so I can tell it not to work on a website where it messes up the formatting
- (2016-09-08) Matt Bowyer: It's good, but just a couple of issues - as other reviewers have pointed out, some of the comparisons really aren't helpful (wavelengths in particular really aren't something you can visualise!). Also, there are issues with collections of numbers such as LS1 V (an engine number) - DoN reads this as one volt, which isn't really helpful - if a number has a space before the unit, then the program should really ignore the number if it's linked to the previous text.
- (2016-04-19) Andrew F: The only thing keeping me from 5 stars is that you can't configure it to pause/disable on particular domains. Since Chrome syncs everywhere, this can be annoying on my work sites (Jenkins, etc.). Sure, you can pause it, but that's all-or-nothing.
- (2016-04-11) Alex Pedersen: Like the comparisons, helps understanding things and putting stuff into perspective. HOWEVER, when you are a college student writing lots of papers it gets really annoying to have to continually erase the additions it adds to your papers. PLEASE blacklist google drive apps.
- (2016-02-23) Henry Butsch: Great extension, puts things into perspective
- (2016-01-18) Alexander Koch: Ignores numbers in anything but english language (why?) Sometimes it displays something in the middle of words (for example in front of ä, ö or ü)
- (2015-10-04) Seiji Tokunaga: I like this extension. A few suggestions: * Is it possible to implement a feature where you auto-detect foreign timezone and translate it to local timezone? * I prefer pop-up explanation to inline explanation. It would be nice to have that option.
- (2015-05-20) Abe Kline: I really wish that it would vary the comparison used rather than always comparing 1 million people to the same exact thing.
- (2015-03-28) Seth Gower: I love this app, the only thing that would make it better would be for it to translate currencies.
- (2015-02-20) Joseph Enders: I like it, but it would be cool if the instant search could also convert measurements.
- (2015-02-08) Albert Winadi: Great concept, but I wish this extension could offer more customization options, as well as more coverage for metric based information. I also support Clayton Lively's suggestion to implement a highlight-to-view function similar to chrome dictionary. Additionally, it would also be great if the extension is able to whitelist some web pages.
- (2015-01-29) Great concept, however poorly executed. For example, looking at text like "The A-10 Thunderbolt airplane," the extension puts a note between the "A-" and "10." Not very polished, sadly.
- (2015-01-01) Sam Scott: The app is definitely amusing and interesting at times, but it can sometimes mess up the formatting of a page(Wikis are a big problem here), and sometimes it cuts into sentences and makes it a bit harder to read. I'd definitely recommend a language chooser and a domain blacklister. It has its flaws, but It's a nice thought-provoking app.
- (2014-12-10) Gianna Righi: This extension is a combination of helpful, informative and unintentionally hilarious. I really enjoy that it gives equivalents to small numbers, too. I am able to keep track of weight loss in strange terms--I've lost a house cat, a women's shot, then a men's shot! My biggest frustration comes from tables of numbers/data. The dictionary 'definition' stretches the table in odd ways, sometimes leaving it unreadable. I do wish there were more definitions. But I'm sure that will come with time. It would also be useful if we could set a group of units that we're comfortable with (ie, Imperial or metric) and it would convert other units to those (within reason). But now I'm just being picky. I really like this extension as is!
- (2014-12-08) Ricardo Moreno Almeida: Is is helpful and fun, however it should have options to disable by site (as in I don't want it to change this or that site)
- (2014-12-03) Sean Crozier: BEst extension I've ever owned. Thought it was funny reading the xkcd blag post: The extension can even be surprisingly funny, like when it seems to be making an oblique suggestion for how to solve a problem—e.g. “The telescope has been criticized for its budget of $200 million [≈ Mitt Romney assets in 2011] [≈ Mitt Romney net worth] and Dictionary of Numbers helpfully informs me that 300,000 acres [≈ Los Angeles, California, USA, city] is about the area of LA or Hong Kong. and It might turn the phrase “315 million people [≈ population of United States, nation]” into “315 million people [≈ population of United States, nation] [≈ the population of the United States]”. found on http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/05/
- (2014-11-24) Jeff Alan: Awesome idea, but its dictionary needs a lot of work. "population of Lesotho" "Speed of wind on exoplanet HD 189733b" "wavelength of the lowest VHF and highest shortwave radio frequency" "A typical value for the specific impulse of current rockets" - these are not useful reference points. I've never heard of Lesotho or HD 189733b, and the second two are needlessly technical. (However, the fact that there exists a planet with wind speeds of over 2 km/s is interesting to know.)
- (2014-11-20) Clim Dhaouia: An extremely fun app. Found out about it reading xkcd blog.
- (2014-10-11) Kayla B: Some of my favourite observations from the dictionary of numbers: Reading about how intelligent people panic when given a simple math problem, I was informed that an example of this is the problem "Fred travels at 50mph for 30 minutes, how far does he go?" can generate responses like "5000 miles [~diameter of dwarf planet Pluto". Better yet, I researched the value that governments placed on the statistical value of human life (a strange enough topic to begin with) . Dictionary of Numbers compared it to such things as 1965 typical CEO pay, most expensive car production in 2011, cost of a small hospital, and best of all, a 30-second Superbowl advertisement.
- (2014-09-22) Kyle Roth: Once in a while it puts velocity comparisons in for my acceleration values in my physics homework. (e.g. "10.9 m/s [≈ Average speed of Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt while setting the 100m world record in Berlin on 16 August 2009.]2".
Statistics
Installs
6,000
history
Category
Rating
3.8093 (236 votes)
Last update / version
2017-08-02 / 1.6.4
Listing languages
en