Sources

The numbers behind The Long Number are not hidden or proprietary. They come from publicly available datasets, original reports, rankings and published estimates.

Many of the figures shown throughout the experience can be independently cross-checked using institutional datasets, original reports, and sources such as Forbes and Bloomberg for wealth estimates. Financial publications and reputable news reporting, including The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and Fortune, can provide useful corroboration or context.

Some figures — particularly estimates of personal wealth — are not fixed values. They change over time and may vary between sources depending on methodology, market conditions and the date of publication. For that reason, The Long Number does not treat these estimates as absolute figures. The source, publication or reference date, and methodology can all matter when interpreting a value.

The aim is not to introduce new economic data, but to present existing information in a way that makes the distance between numbers easier to perceive.

Data sources

The Long Number draws from a range of publicly available information, including economic datasets, institutional reports, wealth estimates, poverty thresholds, company information and reputable financial and news publications. Institutional and primary sources are preferred whenever they are available.

Source details are being expanded as the project develops. The page describes the provenance and verification approach; it does not yet provide a complete per-value source index for every figure in the experience.