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

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

#201

Post by Retric »

jefftk wrote: post #169
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.

The ones that are 25 pieces x 40 pieces are really 1000 pieces. But some puzzles are 27x38 or other more square form factors.

25x40 is rarely used because non square piece give a lot more info about placement and a 25 X 40 rectangle is almost twice as wide as it is tall. It’s rarely the right kind of aspect ratio.

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

#202

Post by grogenaut »

ggreer wrote: post #145
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…

It's the cost of paper not the dollar value. Also only the outermost bills need be real the rest could just be paper, or voided bills or whatever. But accounting can cover it. It's not gold or pennies where the currency costs what it is worth to make

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

#203

Post by hgomersall »

deepsun wrote: post #181
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…

I think those bills didn't go through decommissioning process for used bills. It's much easier to just keep $1M on passive cash balance forever. Yes, they lose about $5k/month on lost interest rate, but a bank can afford it.

These are bank notes so they are a liability of the fed. Them holding them doesn't mean they have more money, they just have less liability.

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

#204

Post by jerf »

stavros wrote: post #166
kaffekaka wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The square side would be 41 m meaning ~1600 square meters per face, if I read correctly. So quite a large flat.

Oh, the side? That makes sense, I thought 41 sqm.

Sorry, yes, 41m-on-a-side cube, not 41m^2-sided cube. The outermost square-root in the expression takes the area of one side of the cube (which is the area of the dollars, divided by 6 to account for needing to cover the 6 sides of the cube) and pulls it down to the cube's length of one side.

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

#205

Post by gosub100 »

jedberg wrote: post #170
bboygravity wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The Fed keeps rigorous track of every bill. They have a database with the serial number of every live bill. The money isn't valid until the serial is put into the database, and any time a bank gets a bill, they have to verify the serial number is in the database. And if it's not they have to turn it in for a replacement that is.

20 years ago before there were as many erosions of personal privacy and before I realized how important privacy was, I thought of a similar system to detect counterfeit money.

Scan it and upload the serial to a database. If that serial has been registered somewhere else, before a plane could possibly transport it there, flag both registers to inspect that bill.

If the serial has already been registered as counterfeit, refuse the currency.

If the serial was not issued by the US mint, refuse the currency.

This would have the adverse effect of flagging valid currency too, but this could be worked around. I think it would make counterfeit much harder and have very little technical cost, since reading the denom and serial is trivial.

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

#206

Post by echelon_musk »

onionisafruit wrote: post #195

From a 2014 reddit post[0]: > This is actually not a million dollars in singles. It is over $1,000,000. The box was created with the wrong dimensions by the contractor, but they still decided to fill it, display it, and claim it is $1,000,000. > > Source: Tour Guide at the Chicago Fed [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2f9sp7/one_million_do...

If only he had Googled he could have saved himself all the trouble!

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

#207

Post by IAmBroom »

tonymet wrote: post #27

counting 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…

> Ask a casino. You can have 3 people count something and come to a different figure off by a few percent.

That seems a wildly unlikely idea: Despite having three people checking sums, their daily profits have a few percent unknown variability in them.

Banks of old would famously make their tellers stay late to track down rather trivial discrepencies, probably as a deterrent to carelessness.

Cite?

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

#208

Post by SilasX »

jmkni wrote: post #192

Kind of off-topic, but I've always thought a good way to suss out what sort of background somebody comes from is to ask them to visualise $1million dollars. People from a "working class" background tend to see a massive pile of money, more middle class, a smaller pile, upper class maybe a cheque or a small stack of $100 bills or a bank transfer. It's maybe one of the weirdest parts of the JBR ransom note (getting rea…

JBR = JonBenet Ramsey

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killing_of_JonBen...

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

#210

Post by bboygravity »

jedberg wrote: post #170
bboygravity wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The Fed keeps rigorous track of every bill. They have a database with the serial number of every live bill. The money isn't valid until the serial is put into the database, and any time a bank gets a bill, they have to verify the serial number is in the database. And if it's not they have to turn it in for a replacement that is.

The thing is that only a tiny amount of all money exists as physical bills. So they can track that all they want, it ain't going to make a dent in the total money supply :p
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