The Almighty Googol

In full-page ads, newspapers and magazines often trumpet their conflicting circulation claims in ways that bewilder readers but apparently impress ad agencies. Last week the Sunday supplement Parade (circ. 5,115,300) spoofed the whole practice with a circulation brochure to prove that it is headed unmistakably toward the "googol" (i.e., mathematical term for 1 plus 100 zeros). The present trend, says Parade "is assuredly toward the googol," since their new claimed readership is over one billion. Method of figuring it out: "Start with Parade's documented total of regular weekly readers (12,892,000), multiply by 3.2, the corrected coefficient of friction (always present in American homes), multiply that by 3.49 for expansion (especially in hot and humid weather), multiply this by 5.11, the number of wage earners per family, add 58.9% to give a 'guns-and-butter' ratio for 1953 in terms of 1939 dollars, subtract 101, the approximate number of newspaper readers who 'never look at pictures.'" Grand total: 1,168,806,315, "the exact figure we had in mind all along."

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