> 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 possible the exhibit designer simply decided a bigger cube which filled the floor to ceiling space would be a better visual. Which would be unfortunate because, personally, the exhibit concept I'm more interested in is "$1M dollars in $100 bills fits in this area" not "Here's $1M in bills." The first concept is mildly interesting while the second is just a stunt.
Regardless of the reason it's off, I think it's most likely there's only $1M of bills in the cube. 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. It also stands to reason that they'd design the cube a little bigger than their calculated area requirement to ensure at least $1M would fit (along with some method of padding the interior) - although >50% seems excessive for a variability margin, so I still think it was an aesthetic choice or calculation error. Of course, one could do a practical replication to verify the area required with $10,000 in $1 bills.
Regardless, it's an interesting observation and a cool counting program to help verify.
daemonologist · 1m ago
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.
gpm · 6m ago
> 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...
ggreer · 3m ago
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.
johnfn · 27m ago
I think this is the most reasonable answer on the thread. As amusing as it is to see everyone come up with zany solutions, it is most likely something boring like this.
quantadev · 17m ago
Yeah, there's no way they piled the cash into a square on the floor and then measured it and then had the box made based on the measurements. They had the box made FIRST based on rough calculations, being sure to over-estimate it's size on purpose, knowing they can fill the interior with cardboard boxes as needed to space things out.
ninetyninenine · 17m ago
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.
whatevertrevor · 4m ago
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.
ninetyninenine · 1m ago
I'm half serious. Yeah I see the point. But more important to me is the analogy.
colejohnson66 · 14m ago
They handle money by putting them in cubes of glass?
Non-snark: Because it's fun to theorize.
ninetyninenine · 1m ago
agreeed
red_admiral · 8m ago
The economist's answer would be to offer to buy the cube for $1.1M. Tell them the extra $100k will fund building another cube plus expenses with spare cash left over. If you're right, pass GO and collect the payout.
goodcanadian · 21m ago
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.
jolt42 · 4m ago
The only way to verify is open that sucker up and count.
bboygravity · 17m ago
When you print money by the trillions a million is insignificant. Maybe they're just not good at such small numbers.
whatevertrevor · 1m ago
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.
c249709 · 17m ago
in that case you would have to assume they stacked the money first, measured, then build a box to fit it
kevin_thibedeau · 1h ago
There are additional stacks hidden by the aluminum framing. Everything is flush against the glass so there are a few more inches on each face not counted in the 102 figure.
voxic11 · 1h ago
So you are saying its even more incorrect than the article claims?
johnfn · 31m ago
That's not an answer to the problem - it just makes the discrepancy greater.
c249709 · 1h ago
do you know that or just speculating? I couldn't figure it out at the museum.
alfalfasprout · 41m ago
I was curious and looked and yes, there are absolutely bills that seem to go into the framing. It's not a solid aluminum bar it looks L shaped in person.
reverendsteveii · 39m ago
so it's off by even more than a half mill?
Nextgrid · 1h ago
That still wouldn't account for a 50% shortfall though?
alberth · 1h ago
It's not a shortfall.
The OP says it totals $1.5M ... and extra $0.5M
Modified3019 · 1h ago
I wonder how many read the title, and assume it’s about being short. I certainly did.
pcthrowaway · 44m ago
I had the feeling it would be a shortfall but had enough doubt to read the article.
delgaudm · 1h ago
Is over by $500k, not short.
suspended_state · 1h ago
Doesn't this depend on the point of view?
boston_clone · 1h ago
Well, sure, things probably look different when you’re standing on your head.
Brian_K_White · 1h ago
Listen, if the money is greater than the claim, another way to say the exact same thing, without even standing on your head, is that the the claim is less than the money!
suspended_state · 47m ago
Yes, but is it as efficient?
barrkel · 1h ago
The article talks about 50% extra, not a shortfall.
Brian_K_White · 55m ago
Then another way to say that is that the claim is short.
ehsankia · 26m ago
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.
megablast · 6m ago
> In some way, this is how 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles will never be exactly 1000 pieces.
What??
ticulatedspline · 12m ago
Seems silly at first but in retrospect isn't that surprising to construct from requirements:
1: we want a big cube
2: has to have a million dollars
3: should be stacked neatly.
Given the bills are so evenly arranged on the lower surface there's only so many squares you can produce with the bills like that. 8x19 or 6x17 . 6x17 is noted as close to 1 mill but they only remove 2 stacks from the 100 side. so now it's not a cube, you'd come under if you trimmed it down to a cube.
so stacked flat seems 8x19 is the smallest square you can make for one side for a cube of cash that fits mil. so they did that and just filled it up.
It might be hollow, there's certainly a void. There's some comments about the border but you can clearly see that the bills don't go behind the border so the corners are squared in, which means there's probably a weird void of some sort because it's not really a normal cube.
somat · 10m ago
You need a cube that is a multiple of the width of a dollar on one side and a multiple of the height of a dollar on the other side. technically it needs to be a a multiple of the thickness of a dollar as well but that is so thin we can ignore it.
us dollar size:
Width: 6.14 inches (155.956 mm)
Height: 2.61 inches (66.294 mm)
How close over a million dollars can you make this cube?
I am a bit slow at math so still working on the ratios.
rkagerer · 52m ago
I'd like to see this or a similar follow up project memorialized onto a small plaque beside the exhibit.
crazysim · 54m ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the bills themselves are marked with specimen or something on the non-visible side. Maybe they're also artificially worn bills produced during bringup or testing.
burnt-resistor · 35m ago
I agree. The "money" probably has the shape and appearance of money, but isn't legal tender out of concern risk management and theft.
The cube is almost certainly hollow, to cut weight and cost.
It's the idea of what a cube of $1m would look like. It should at least fulfill that requirement faithfully.
nativeit · 28m ago
Someone else had mentioned these were retired dollar bills (aka, otherwise headed to the incinerator) but I don't know the provenance of this information.
citizenpaul · 44m ago
Meanwhile I'm in a debate about the effectiveness/competence of government workers on another post.
I realize the fed is not technically a government agency.
fires10 · 36m ago
I do not understand the claim the Fed is not a government agency?
darkstar999 · 31m ago
> Although an instrument of the U.S. government, the Federal Reserve System considers itself "an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the president or by anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the board of governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.
The for-profit ones (Amtrak, USPS, etc.) are called SOEs.
The loan-related ones (Freddie Mae) are called GSEs.
chrisweekly · 15m ago
IA - Independent Agency
giancarlostoro · 1h ago
Do we truly know if the Middle is all dollar bills and not filler?
mh- · 10m ago
This felt like the most obvious explanation to me as well. Maybe the artist's vision for it was a solid cube of cash, but it ended up needing a structure inside to support the thing.
So many reasons this might be exactly $1,000,000 but not sum up on the outside.
That said, this is also something I would have spent way too much time overthinking, so I thoroughly enjoyed reading the blog post.
jihadjihad · 58m ago
Not until Nicolas Cage gets involved.
lapetitejort · 42m ago
We need to sneak a CT scanner, into the Fed...?
c249709 · 1h ago
there's only one way to find out
aetherson · 1h ago
Hacker News heist plan initiated.
nurettin · 38m ago
You s.o.a.b I'm in!
pjs_ · 18m ago
This good article contains a photograph of a million quid nailed to a wall. Since burnt by scoundrels
I can't argue with the math, but intuitively that just seems really small? It means that you can lay down 166,000 $1 bills on the floor of a very small flat?
padjo · 10m ago
A flat with very high ceilings?
Edit: even still 41x41 floorspace is a very large flat.
dogecoinbase · 13m ago
41 meters is the height of a 13-story building.
florbnit · 1h ago
The cube is “almost any size” it’s literally overshooting by 50%
Brian_K_White · 25m ago
What 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.
swyx · 21m ago
artists cant do math
Jabrov · 1h ago
I bet it’s not cash all the way through to make it look bigger
voiper1 · 37m ago
He did say he doesn't know if the center has cash inside... but a hollow core definitely defeats the display purpose!
taeric · 1h ago
Since the rows counted were not uniform, why assume all 19 under each of them is? As such, it wouldn't have to be hollow, but doesn't have to be neatly packed in the center, either.
Hilarious and well written exercise, regardless. Kudos!
nativeit · 27m ago
Sort of defeats the purpose of visualizing $1M. I'd call this art project flawed in its execution, at best.
taeric · 15m ago
Ish? Look up the optimum packing of squares. :D
behnamoh · 13m ago
the homepage of this website is so cool, but also a bit pretentious. like, why would the OP include things like "#1 on Hackernews", etc.?
alberth · 1h ago
I don't think the cube is stacked as uniformly as the OP thinks.
Notice in this photo how the side of the cub right/side - the bills are not oriented in the same direction as on the other sides.
I count 8 stacks in that orientation, which is exactly as described in the article.
tehwebguy · 1h ago
This is a cool tool. Did the same thing (manually, just counted and switched colors whenever I hit 100) when I vacuumed up like a thousand yellow jackets from inside our walls. Couldn’t believe it when I hit 500, would have never estimated so high.
jt2190 · 57m ago
> All I wanted was a way to click on things in a photo and have the number go up.
> You’d think this would already exist, a browser based tool for counting things.
Just want to point out that these apps do exist, perhaps not browser based. For example:
I spend more time counting things than most people. I use the ‘Count’ tool in Bluebeam Revu (an architecture/construction pdf editor) when doing material takeoffs for construction estimating. You need to do a lot more than just count when doing a takeoff, so there really isn’t much use for a counting specific tool in my industry.
Bluebeam Revu can also do visual counts for specific symbols/images provided the drawings aren’t too busy, that is one use of AI I would like to see (automated takeoffs) so I don’t have to click thousands of light fixture symbols every year. One problem is that construction drawing are 2D and height information isn’t always present so measuring distance and accounting for rise and drop is difficult to automate, I use google maps street view frequently to gather height info (calibration is based off a standard commercial door at 80” x 36” or a CMU at 8” tall) if I don’t visit a site. Due to this and other factors, I think accurate construction estimating will be difficult to automate completely with LLMs, but the process will definitely be sped up by them.
This would probably be a hard case for it! But would be cool to see how well it works.
zefhous · 1h ago
Uh... in-app purchases for $24 for a 24-hour license? $80 pay-per-count? The AI marketing images... Ugh.
MadnessASAP · 1h ago
I get that they're selling to industry, not consumers. They also seem to be offering some pretty strong guarantees regarding accuracy. Nevertheless that pricing is bananas. An uncountable number of bananas.
Veen · 1h ago
Counting is very time-consuming, important to get right, and easy to get wrong. I expect quite a few businesses are happy to pay that for fast, accurate counting.
cxr · 46m ago
This is yet another link to an app that doesn't do what the author of the post actually specified.
tonymet · 1h ago
counting things are a huge intellectual blind spot. For some reason, when people hear a figure, they accept it as gospel.
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 this guy did.
klank · 18m ago
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.
burningChrome · 1h ago
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?
toast0 · 59m ago
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 will scan serial numbers, so you could probably confirm you saw 1 Million distinct serial numbers while scanning. Multiple counters in parallel would reduce the wall clock time, of course. And you might want to do multiple counts, sometimes bills stick.
You could also count the number of straps and take a random sample to count. While counting the straps, you'd probably notice any grossly miscounted straps. If any of the sampled straps are wrong, you would presumably increase the sample rate to confirm. Weighing groups of 10 straps is probably faster than counting, but I don't know how sensitive it would be (depends on how consistent weights of the strapping material is, as well as weight of circulated bills).
klank · 22m ago
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.
lrivers · 36m ago
<Cue Borat impression>My wife</end> works at a legit, long-established, high volume retail store. Some of the time she keeps books there. They just weigh money, it’s accurate enough for them.
pjc50 · 1h ago
Iraq, and no. Almost certainly the biggest undetected heist in history.
ahazred8ta · 53m ago
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.
absoflutely · 22m ago
...as part of the Iran nuclear deal that Trump reversed for no reason.
tromp · 1h ago
I can't help wondering how big a cube you'd need to fill it with 1 million $1 coins.
43x43 piles of 541 coins each make 1000309 coins with a pile height of 541*2mm = 1.082m,
while the width would be somewhat less than 43*26.5mm = 1.1395m with a hexagonal packing.
So just over 1m cubed, a little smaller than the bill version. But at 8100 kg, tons heavier.
cgriswald · 1h ago
Edit: Well, damn. I got about the same as you did and rechecked my math and got it wrong.
If you need a web app to mark/count things in images, search for "image annotation" tools. I know first hand of a tool that is around since 2009 and still maintained.
eggy · 31m ago
Did you account for the paper band that wraps the 100 one-dollar bills? Not nitpicking, but you said you counted everything you could see.
It should be between 0.002-0.004 in. thick, so each band per bundle is about 0.004 to 0.008 thick. Might take off a little bit of your overage.
johnfn · 30m ago
OP counts the number of bundles, so I don't think this solves it.
MisterTea · 1h ago
Someone needs to call/email the museum and ask what is actually in there because it don't add up.
divbzero · 20m ago
It was $1M back in 2007.
dlinder · 39m ago
Audit the Fed (cube)!
HPsquared · 1h ago
Probably has a tidy façade, with a jumble full of gaps in the middle.
Edit: Actually I reckon they deliberately oversized the container a bit so it's easier to pack the cash in. You don't want to build it too small! (Relative budget notwithstanding). Another design constraint it has to be a cube, and has to fit nicely to the dimensions of the banknotes on the front face (aspect ratio and size) without having a big gap on one side.
FerretFred · 1h ago
>So yeah. They’re off by 50%.
Ah, that'll be the allowance for inflation/devaluation.
pirate787 · 1h ago
or allowance for vendor graft if they billed for $1mm
JadeNB · 44m ago
Why in the world would you use KaTeX to write a number that is just being used as a number, not part of a mathematical formula? But, if you must, at least use some tricks to make the spacing work correctly: since TeX treats `,` as `mathpunct`, you need to use something like `\$1{,}000{,}000` (or change its catcode) to get something that renders as a plain old non-KaTeXed "$1,000,000" would.
c249709 · 33m ago
thanks for the tip! I just wanted all the numbers to look the same
JadeNB · 10m ago
Oh, that makes sense! I was so caught up on the article beginning that way that it didn't occur to me that there'd be formulas later on, and it makes sense to want the numbers to appear the same in and out of formulas. Thank you for fixing the spacing, and nice article!
uticus · 1h ago
i'm amazed he accurately placed the dots. if i were to use the png on the site without dots, i'd have trouble placing them in a lot of areas.
ziofill · 1h ago
"What if it’s hollow? [...] A money shell. A decorative cube. A fiscal illusion. The world’s most expensive piñata"
lol
lupusreal · 53m ago
I expected it to be 50% short because whoever assembled it swiped half of the cash assuming nobody would ever count. 50% over is hilarious.
CamperBob2 · 24m ago
Sure, 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.
wat10000 · 1h ago
I'd bet on "hollow." Either they overestimated how large the cube would have to be to contain that much, or just decided they wanted a bigger cube than they needed.
whatshisface · 1h ago
Ron Paul is still alive and in some small way, just got his dream of auditing the fed turned into reality.
No comments yet
rafram · 1h ago
Re Dot Counter, cool work, but charging me $3 to download an image with dots on it is just silly.
That's 0.80€ per count and it's automatic. Still seems too expensive.
mslansn · 1h ago
Not surprised that the Fed overspent a project by 50%.
umanwizard · 1h ago
I doubt this cost them 1.5M out of their real budget, lol. My guess is these are not legal tender in some way, e.g. worn-out bills that would otherwise be destroyed.
tracerbulletx · 56m ago
The fact that this is not obvious to everyone is a bit disturbing to be honest..
mv4 · 57m ago
It's always amusing how people easily carry $1M cash in the movies.
nixpulvis · 55m ago
Those are probably $100 bills. So you only need to fill a bag with 100 bundles. Easily fits in a duffle bag I'd assume.
Taek · 55m ago
In the movies, it's $100 bills, which are considerably more portable than $1 bills.
steezeburger · 54m ago
Those aren't stacks of one dollar bills though.
c249709 · 55m ago
if it's in $100 bills you can fit it in a suit case easily with lots of space left
tbrake · 55m ago
well, using larger denominations helps.
labster · 49m ago
Yeah, that many pennies would be really heavy.
Similarly, I always love it when small women smuggle suitcases full of gold in movies, when it would be heavy enough to break the handle off if it weren’t painted styrofoam.
ffin · 54m ago
the cube is full of $1 bills
kingkawn · 54m ago
Compress the cube by 100x and you could probably carry it
if the Federal Reserve lies about the numbers.... what don't they lie about?
ar_lan · 39m ago
Did they ever consider there could be a hollow core, or filler to account for the discrepancy?
IshKebab · 35m ago
Yes, I used my eyes to read the article and I can confirm that they did consider it, because they wrote it down in the article we are discussing.
thinkingemote · 33m ago
The exhibit rotates. It will have the same kind of structure shown at the bottom through the middle of it at the very least, and probably a sort of skeleton for stability.
8n4vidtmkvmk · 26m ago
Yes, they did.
HelloMcFly · 37m ago
That's in TFA
tzury · 29m ago
In 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.
That's quite heavy - equivalent to carrying around a large person!
Those 70,000 bills would also represent $7 million in cash
* edit corrected the pounds calculation
hinterlands · 19m ago
> 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.
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 possible the exhibit designer simply decided a bigger cube which filled the floor to ceiling space would be a better visual. Which would be unfortunate because, personally, the exhibit concept I'm more interested in is "$1M dollars in $100 bills fits in this area" not "Here's $1M in bills." The first concept is mildly interesting while the second is just a stunt.
Regardless of the reason it's off, I think it's most likely there's only $1M of bills in the cube. 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. It also stands to reason that they'd design the cube a little bigger than their calculated area requirement to ensure at least $1M would fit (along with some method of padding the interior) - although >50% seems excessive for a variability margin, so I still think it was an aesthetic choice or calculation error. Of course, one could do a practical replication to verify the area required with $10,000 in $1 bills.
Regardless, it's an interesting observation and a cool counting program to help verify.
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...
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.
I think it’s better served to use this as an analogy of how the federal government handles money.
Non-snark: Because it's fun to theorize.
The OP says it totals $1.5M ... and extra $0.5M
It would've been much worse if it was under though.
What??
1: we want a big cube
2: has to have a million dollars
3: should be stacked neatly.
Given the bills are so evenly arranged on the lower surface there's only so many squares you can produce with the bills like that. 8x19 or 6x17 . 6x17 is noted as close to 1 mill but they only remove 2 stacks from the 100 side. so now it's not a cube, you'd come under if you trimmed it down to a cube.
so stacked flat seems 8x19 is the smallest square you can make for one side for a cube of cash that fits mil. so they did that and just filled it up.
It might be hollow, there's certainly a void. There's some comments about the border but you can clearly see that the bills don't go behind the border so the corners are squared in, which means there's probably a weird void of some sort because it's not really a normal cube.
us dollar size: Width: 6.14 inches (155.956 mm) Height: 2.61 inches (66.294 mm)
How close over a million dollars can you make this cube?
I am a bit slow at math so still working on the ratios.
The cube is almost certainly hollow, to cut weight and cost.
It's the idea of what a cube of $1m would look like. It should at least fulfill that requirement faithfully.
I realize the fed is not technically a government agency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
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.
So many reasons this might be exactly $1,000,000 but not sum up on the outside.
That said, this is also something I would have spent way too much time overthinking, so I thoroughly enjoyed reading the blog post.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~johol/KLF/Money.html
Edit: even still 41x41 floorspace is a very large flat.
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.
Hilarious and well written exercise, regardless. Kudos!
Notice in this photo how the side of the cub right/side - the bills are not oriented in the same direction as on the other sides.
https://calvin.sh/blog/fed-lie/cube-side.jpg/
> You’d think this would already exist, a browser based tool for counting things.
Just want to point out that these apps do exist, perhaps not browser based. For example:
https://www.countthis.ai/
Bluebeam Revu can also do visual counts for specific symbols/images provided the drawings aren’t too busy, that is one use of AI I would like to see (automated takeoffs) so I don’t have to click thousands of light fixture symbols every year. One problem is that construction drawing are 2D and height information isn’t always present so measuring distance and accounting for rise and drop is difficult to automate, I use google maps street view frequently to gather height info (calibration is based off a standard commercial door at 80” x 36” or a CMU at 8” tall) if I don’t visit a site. Due to this and other factors, I think accurate construction estimating will be difficult to automate completely with LLMs, but the process will definitely be sped up by them.
https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/dynamic-ventures-inc/id9...
This would probably be a hard case for it! But would be cool to see how well it works.
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 this guy did.
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.
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 will scan serial numbers, so you could probably confirm you saw 1 Million distinct serial numbers while scanning. Multiple counters in parallel would reduce the wall clock time, of course. And you might want to do multiple counts, sometimes bills stick.
You could also count the number of straps and take a random sample to count. While counting the straps, you'd probably notice any grossly miscounted straps. If any of the sampled straps are wrong, you would presumably increase the sample rate to confirm. Weighing groups of 10 straps is probably faster than counting, but I don't know how sensitive it would be (depends on how consistent weights of the strapping material is, as well as weight of circulated bills).
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.
43x43 piles of 541 coins each make 1000309 coins with a pile height of 541*2mm = 1.082m, while the width would be somewhat less than 43*26.5mm = 1.1395m with a hexagonal packing.
So just over 1m cubed, a little smaller than the bill version. But at 8100 kg, tons heavier.
Anyway, the weight would be 8.1 metric tons.
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coins-and-medals/circulating-co...
It should be between 0.002-0.004 in. thick, so each band per bundle is about 0.004 to 0.008 thick. Might take off a little bit of your overage.
Edit: Actually I reckon they deliberately oversized the container a bit so it's easier to pack the cash in. You don't want to build it too small! (Relative budget notwithstanding). Another design constraint it has to be a cube, and has to fit nicely to the dimensions of the banknotes on the front face (aspect ratio and size) without having a big gap on one side.
Ah, that'll be the allowance for inflation/devaluation.
lol
Well, no, it's kind of like ordering two burgers and getting three.
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Similarly, I always love it when small women smuggle suitcases full of gold in movies, when it would be heavy enough to break the handle off if it weren’t painted styrofoam.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n6dJB8OcA8I
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.
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Calculation by Claude:
Here's the calculation:
A single US banknote weighs about 1 gram regardless of denomination.
So 70,000 bills × 1 gram = 70,000 grams = 70 kilograms = 154 pounds.
That's quite heavy - equivalent to carrying around a large person!
Those 70,000 bills would also represent $7 million in cash
* edit corrected the pounds calculation
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.
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