What Happens to the Rounded $$$$$

[John Rogers]

Many years ago in San Diego there was a bank programmer (I believe?) that discovered that bank customers were only getting 2 decimal places of $$$$ for their account interest, etc. The computer calculated to 12 decimal places so he thought.... hey why not save it so he did and ended up with diamonds and such but was caught.

Anyways, to the present, I bought gas at Costco today and noted the price per gallon was $3.559 and I bought 14.119 gallons. So if you do the math, the total should be $ 50.249521 but I was charged $50.25. So what about the $0.000479 that I lost???? May not sound like much, BUT with 1000s of customers per week or 100000000s per year this could add up??!!

Or am I just getting old and senile?

[red-beard]

You think the pump/meter is accurate enough to read to 5 decimal points?

Most instrumentation is good to about 0.25% of full scale.

[drmatera]

Wasn't that in the movie Office Space?

[dad911]

Originally Posted by john rogers

Many years ago in San Diego there was a bank programmer (I believe?) that discovered that bank customers were only getting 2 decimal places of $$$$ for their account interest, etc. The computer calculated to 12 decimal places so he thought.... hey why not save it so he did and ended up with diamonds and such but was caught.

Anyways, to the present, I bought gas at Costco today and noted the price per gallon was $3.559 and I bought 14.119 gallons. So if you do the math, the total should be $ 50.249521 but I was charged $50.25. So what about the $0.000479 that I lost???? May not sound like much, BUT with 1000s of customers per week or 100000000s per year this could add up??!!

Or am I just getting old and senile?

Well, with 2 significant digits(same as money), it should have been:
$3.56 per gallon and 14.12 gallons = $50.27, so you owe them 2 cents!

[Hugh R]

I think it was in one of the Superman movies as well.

[stomachmonkey]

Richard Pryor in Superman.

[cgarr]

I pump the cold fuel in the ground into my hot tank and get an extra half gallon!

[Flieger]

Originally Posted by drmatera

Wasn't that in the movie Office Space?

This

[porsche930dude]

a couple months ago i filled up and stopped pumping but the numbers kept going up! you better believe i shut it off right quick . i wouldnt worry too much about that extra bit. cant be any worse than where the rest of the money goes

[onewhippedpuppy]

Samir: ****, ****, ****, ****!
Peter Gibbons: Son of a *****! ****!
Samir: This is a...****!
Peter Gibbons: Son of a *****!
Samir: I...I...****!
Michael Bolton: What happened?
Peter Gibbons: You tell me, Michael, it's your software!
Samir: Yes, it's your software!
Peter Gibbons: You know corporate accounting is sure as hell going to notice three hundred five thousand three hundred...
[grabs the receipt from Michael]
Peter Gibbons: ...twenty six thirteen, Michael!
Samir: Oh ****!
Michael Bolton: They probably won't know it's gone for another three or four days.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Gibbons: Michael! Michael! You said the thing was gonna take two years! What happened? You said the thing was supposed to work.
Michael Bolton: Well, technically it did work.
Peter Gibbons: No it didn't!
Samir: It did not work, Michael, okay?
Michael Bolton: Okay! Okay! Okay!
Samir: Okay?
Michael Bolton: Okay! I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. ****! I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail.
Peter Gibbons: Oh! What is this fairly mundane detail, Michael?
Michael Bolton: Okay, quit getting pissed at me, all right? This was all your idea, *******!
Peter Gibbons: All right. Okay. All right. Let's try not to get pissed off at each other, all right? Let's just calm down. Let's try to figure this thing out together. The first thing we gotta do is we gotta close that account down before it gets any bigger.

[redstrosekNic]

^^^ I love Peter's reaction when he first finds out how much is in the account when he looks at the slip.

[John Rogers]

Now do you guys think a movie writer could actually think of that on their own......Google is your friend. For years, San Diego's Computer Edge magazine used to run a short article on the conviction date of the "first" cyber criminal.