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The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

calvin.sh

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Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#141

Post by gpm »

mrandish wrote: post #91

> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a display, did a rough estimate of the area needed and then commissioned the exhibit builders to make the big metal-framed cube. Either they made an error in their calculation or the innate variability in the size of stacks of used bills threw it off. It's also possi…

> The folks responsible for collecting and destroying used bills tend to be exacting in their auditing for obvious reasons. So when the exhibit designers got $1M in used bills approved and released, that's exactly how much they got.

But who says that they didn't actually request $1.5M in used bills after doing the math of what it would take to make a cube. Or fill it up with $1M in used bills, and come back and make another request for $500k that also got approved...

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#142

Post by megablast »

ehsankia wrote: post #110

Maybe just my biased brain, but the title made it sound like they were half a million under, not over. In some way, this is how 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles will never be exactly 1000 pieces. As long as there's at least 1000, I think most people are fine, especially as an art piece. And of course as mentioned, there's the possibility that there's filler inside. It would've been much worse if it was under though.

> In some way, this is how 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles will never be exactly 1000 pieces.

What??

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#143

Post by whatevertrevor »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #125
mrandish wrote: post #91

> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a display, did a rough estimate of the area needed and then commissioned the exhibit builders to make the big metal-framed cube. Either they made an error in their calculation or the innate variability in the size of stacks of used bills threw it off. It's also possi…

What’s the point of disseminating the technical reasoning behind it? I think it’s better served to use this as an analogy of how the federal government handles money.

Because we still care about assigning sensible priors to whatever we think is the truth? You can use this to "analogize" how the feds handle money, but if they were actually careful with the money but a bit misleading on the space $1m would take, that's a different and less egregious error. Ignoring the space of potential possible explanations to make your analogy stronger is just confirmation bias with additional steps.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#144

Post by jolt42 »

goodcanadian wrote: post #117

It'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.

The only way to verify is open that sucker up and count.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#145

Post by ggreer »

mrandish wrote: post #91

> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a display, did a rough estimate of the area needed and then commissioned the exhibit builders to make the big metal-framed cube. Either they made an error in their calculation or the innate variability in the size of stacks of used bills threw it off. It's also possi…

It could be that they measured a stack of bills sitting on a table, then did the math to make a metal frame to contain $1,000,000. But they didn't account for stacks compressing under the weight of higher stacks, and it wouldn't look as nice if the top part of the cube was empty.

Still, it does seem like it would be cheaper to rebuild the case than to add $500k to it. Maybe it's easy for the Fed to acquire more cash as long as it's guaranteed not to be spent.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#146

Post by ninetyninenine »

whatevertrevor wrote: post #143
ninetyninenine wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the point of disseminating the technical reasoning behind it? I think it’s better served to use this as an analogy of how the federal government handles money.

Because we still care about assigning sensible priors to whatever we think is the truth? You can use this to "analogize" how the feds handle money, but if they were actually careful with the money but a bit misleading on the space $1m would take, that's a different and less egregious error. Ignoring the space of potential possible explanations to make your analogy stronger is just confirmation bias with additional st…

I'm half serious. Yeah I see the point. But more important to me is the analogy.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#147

Post by whatevertrevor »

bboygravity wrote: post #124
goodcanadian wrote: post #117

It'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.

[flagged]

When you print money by the trillions, tracking every transaction becomes more important not less. I don't know about the exhibit, it is possible that this is not real money too.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#148

Post by ninetyninenine »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #131
ninetyninenine wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the point of disseminating the technical reasoning behind it? I think it’s better served to use this as an analogy of how the federal government handles money.

They handle money by putting them in cubes of glass? Non-snark: Because it's fun to theorize.

agreeed

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#149

Post by daemonologist »

mrandish wrote: post #91

> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a display, did a rough estimate of the area needed and then commissioned the exhibit builders to make the big metal-framed cube. Either they made an error in their calculation or the innate variability in the size of stacks of used bills threw it off. It's also possi…

The compression of the bills under their own weight might account for the excessive margin - a lone $100 bundle, even compressed by hand before measuring, probably takes up more vertical space than the ones in the cube.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#150

Post by scrozier »

chrisweekly wrote: post #128
burnt-resistor wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're an IA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_Un... The for-profit ones (Amtrak, USPS, etc.) are called SOEs. The loan-related ones (Freddie Mae) are called GSEs.

IA - Independent Agency

Thank you. While abbreviations are handy for those in the know, it's so helpful for general readers if one takes a moment to spell things out.
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