Did they ever consider there could be a hollow core, or filler to account for the discrepancy?
Yes, they did.
The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
111–120 of 578 posts
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#112What is the point in making a display like this at all in the first place, but making it either under claimed or over filled?
Who gets anything out of giving people the wrong idea about what $1m would look like?
If you are commissioning the thing to be built, why might you want it to either contain more than $1m, or be hollow and larger than what $1m really is? What purpose does an incorrect display serve? A correct display already serves almost no purpose in the first place, now make it incorrect.
None of the reasons I can think of would seem to apply here:
Disinformation.
Advertizement.
Art, where the artists point was to make it wrong and never tell anyone.
Simple goof up? This one is at least plausible. Someone estimated wrong, got a local shop to build an expensive cube(1), well we got the cube we got, fill it and get the display up.
(1) That will have to be quite thick polycarbonate or glass, not cheap. In fact, that right there might expose that there is at least some kind of fakery inside, if the glass is not at least as thick as the aluminum frame, then it's not strong enough, neither is the frame for that matter if it's what it looks like. So if the glass and frame are as thin as they look, then there is some kind of internal skeleton.)
Maybe there is some other significance we've lost since it was built. Maybe the $1m was never the interesting point originally. Maybe instead the dimensions or maybe weight of the cube were the interrsting thing, and this is really something like "1000 gallons of $1 bills" and that just hsppens to come out to 1.55m.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#113Sure, it does technically contain $1,000,000. And also $550,400 of bonus money.
Which is kind of like ordering a burger and getting three.
Well, no, it's kind of like ordering two burgers and getting three.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iraq, and no. Almost certainly the biggest undetected heist in history.
2016: "The Obama administration is acknowledging its transfer of $1.7 billion to Iran earlier this year was made entirely in cash" -- We froze a bunch of their money in the 70s; Obama unfroze it.
...as part of the Iran nuclear deal that Trump reversed for no reason.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes you wonder if all those pallets of cash we sent Iran really contained all the money we said it did. Also makes me wonder how you count money that arrives on pallets like that? Do you set up a warehouse full of money counters?
A quick look around says commercially available bill counters count around 1000 bills per minute. Low cost counters have batch sizes of around 200 bills. Larger capacity counters are available. Assuming the process keeps a single counter running continuously, it would be 1000 minutes, not quite 17 hours of work to do a single pass counting with one counter. There's a maintenance interval though. Some of the counters…
While doing work for hospitality optimization software, I had the fortune of seeing some of the cash management infrastructure at gaming trade shows.
I wish I remembered more specific details, but I at least assume similar levels of capacity for bill counting and counterfeit detection are available to nation states. Verifying the cash would be even easier and faster than you're describing.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#116What is the point in making a display like this at all in the first place, but making it either under claimed or over filled? Who gets anything out of giving people the wrong idea about what $1m would look like? If you are commissioning the thing to be built, why might you want it to either contain more than $1m, or be hollow and larger than what $1m really is? What purpose does an incorrect display serve? A correct…
artists cant do math
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#117It's funny how all the comments seem to assume the conclusion is correct. I think it is far more likely that it is exactly $1M (plus or minus a couple of percent margin of error), and that the packing isn't uniform. It seems extremely unlikely to me that they would fuck it up so bad as to have $500k more in the box than claimed.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#118It was $1M back in 2007.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#119In case you wondered, $1M in cash ($100 bills) weigh approximately 22 pounds (about 10 kilograms). Last week I was watching that episode of Better Call Saul where he carries $7M throughout the desert for 36 hours, and realized his bags were supposed to get ripped 4 minutes into the process. -- Calculation by Claude: Here's the calculation: A single US banknote weighs about 1 gram regardless of denomination. So 70,000…
> In case you wondered, $1M in cash ($100 bills) weigh approximately 15.4 pounds (about 10 kilograms).
Your answer is incorrect. You asked Claude to calculate $7M, which netted 154 pounds, but you then divided it by 10 instead of 7 to get the weight of $1M.
Further, it's quite irrelevant here, as the display involves $1 banknotes, not $100 bills. The correct answer, without the need for an LLM, is: 1 million bills times one gram = 1 million grams = 1,000 kg = 1 metric ton.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#120counting things are a huge intellectual blind spot. For some reason, when people hear a figure, they accept it as gospel. sums, averages, population, budgets, spending, rates. Counting things is time consuming and error prone. Ask a casino. You can have 3 people count something and come to a different figure off by a few percent. Seriously if someone says there's $1m in there, who is going to second guess? Thankfully…
People, as a group, trust numbers. Individuals, often, do not.
Pick any industry which revolves around something, I assure you there is a child-industry dedicated to providing the technology and infrastructure to count the things.
Heck, accounting, as a general purpose, applies to every profession, profession, is at its core, focused on counting things.
Hopefully this doesn't come across as argumentative. Your comment caused me to reflect on how you're right, we trust so much when it comes to numbers people tell us. But at the same time, we don't as evidenced by the vast amount of industry we dedicate to counting all that we do, whatever it is.