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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

#291

Post by jjk166 »

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 costs about $.032 to produce a 1 dollar note, so an extra 500000 new bills would be about $16k.

It could be even cheaper if these were old bills than needed to be pulled out of circulation. In that case they'ed be paying money to dispose of them anyways.

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

#292

Post by jjk166 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #274
rtkwe wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ignores the other option which is it's not solid and they just filled the empty space with foam or a wooden box.

Which destroys what the exhibit is trying to show.

The exhibit only claims this is what a $1M cube would look like.

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

#293

Post by lxgr »

Hamuko wrote: post #266
meta_ai_x wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We have a double accounting system. For every $1 it creates, it has to create an equivalent liability. And when something is budgeted for $1 Million, it is $1m nothing more nothing less

I'm not really familiar with accounting in English but is it really a liability in double-entry accounting? Wouldn't generating money basically be income? So if you sell $1000 worth of stuff, you credit the sales account for $1000 and debit your cash/bank account for $1000, and the account's basically a bottomless pit where you can draw as long as you're generating income.

> I'm not really familiar with accounting in English but is it really a liability in double-entry accounting?

Only if you're the central bank, but for them, it really is, yes. For everybody else, money held is an asset, since it's somebody else's (in this case, the central bank's) liability to them.

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

#295

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#296

Post by jaisio »

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…

Fun fact: "area" denotes 2D. The 3D term is "volume".

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

#298

Post by jjk166 »

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.

I mean the math given showing the size for an actual ~$1M cube is substantially smaller is pretty compelling. The author puts forward the explanation that there may be voids in the cube instead of an additional $500k, but that doesn't really address the problem that this isn't the right size for a $1M cube.

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

#300

Post by Dilettante_ »

Feuilles_Mortes wrote: post #172

Instead of writing the counting tool he could have used the Multi-Point Tool in ImageJ [1] [2]. I used it just this morning for counting some embryos I collected. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhFNiPsVRoM [2] https://fiji.sc/

>I used it just this morning for counting some embryos I collected

"Sentences that flashbang people not in biology"

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