Answer: Hello mate!
let's solve this in the given notation:
The yearly salary of an NBA player is $2.5x10^7
The yearly salary of John is $40000, this has 4 zeros, so we can write this as $4x10^4
Then the relation between the salary can be calculated as:
(2.5x10^7)/( 4x10^4)
using the distributive property, we can solve it as:
(2.5/4)*(10^7/10^4) = 0.625x10^(7 - 4) = 0.625x10^3
we can rewrite this as:
6.25x10^2, or 625
Then the yearly salary of the NBA player is 625 times bigger than the one of John.