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"In a month, you'll be a millionaire"

Doug Otte

Doug Otte

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
Tonight, I was watching the alternate Where No Man on the Season 3 BD set. Now, I've seen this episode many, many times over the past 35 years.

In the briefing room scene, where Sulu is describing the geometrically expanding powers of Gary Mitchell, he says:

"That is, like having a penny, doubling it every day...In a month, you'll be a millionaire."

I had always thought it was a bit of hyperbole, but hadn't really calculated it until tonight. I used Excel and started with 1 in cell A1, then went across, doubling the figure in each cell until I filled 31 columns (assuming it was a 31-day month). The figure in the 31st column was 1,073,741,824. I then added up all the cells and obtained 2,147,483,647. Of course, I then had to divide by 100 (to convert from cents to dollars) and obtained $21,474,836.47.

So, Sulu was actually being rather understated in his remark!

Doug
 
I, too, was curious about this a couple of decades ago. I figured it out as well, but with a handheld calculator.
 
Not to be a jerk, but this could've gone in that thread in Miscellaneous last month about "Stuff You're Surprised People Don't Know"
 
Doug Otte said:
Tonight, I was watching the alternate Where No Man on the Season 3 BD set. Now, I've seen this episode many, many times over the past 35 years.

In the briefing room scene, where Sulu is describing the geometrically expanding powers of Gary Mitchell, he says:

"That is, like having a penny, doubling it every day...In a month, you'll be a millionaire."

I had always thought it was a bit of hyperbole, but hadn't really calculated it until tonight. I used Excel and started with 1 in cell A1, then went across, doubling the figure in each cell until I filled 31 columns (assuming it was a 31-day month). The figure in the 31st column was 1,073,741,824. I then added up all the cells and obtained 2,147,483,647. Of course, I then had to divide by 100 (to convert from cents to dollars) and obtained $21,474,836.47.

So, Sulu was actually being rather understated in his remark!

Doug
Click to expand...

Why did you add up all the cells? You don't wind up with a summation of all the values, you wind up with the value in cell #31.

EDIT: If the month in question is February in a non-leap year, his quote is exactly right. You'd become a millionaire on the last day of the month.
 
Chaos Descending said:
Doug Otte said:
Tonight, I was watching the alternate Where No Man on the Season 3 BD set. Now, I've seen this episode many, many times over the past 35 years.

In the briefing room scene, where Sulu is describing the geometrically expanding powers of Gary Mitchell, he says:

"That is, like having a penny, doubling it every day...In a month, you'll be a millionaire."

I had always thought it was a bit of hyperbole, but hadn't really calculated it until tonight. I used Excel and started with 1 in cell A1, then went across, doubling the figure in each cell until I filled 31 columns (assuming it was a 31-day month). The figure in the 31st column was 1,073,741,824. I then added up all the cells and obtained 2,147,483,647. Of course, I then had to divide by 100 (to convert from cents to dollars) and obtained $21,474,836.47.

So, Sulu was actually being rather understated in his remark!

Doug
Click to expand...

Why did you add up all the cells? You don't wind up with a summation of all the values, you wind up with the value in cell #31.

EDIT: If the month in question is February in a non-leap year, his quote is exactly right. You'd become a millionaire on the last day of the month.
Click to expand...

A-ha! I knew someone w/ more common sense would find a problem w/ my calculations. You're right. I was assuming he earned, each day, double the amount he earned on the previous day. But Sulu didn't say that. He just said that if he doubled the amount, each day, that he had on the previous day...duh.

So, yes, at the end of 28 days he'd have $1,342,177.28.

You'd think I was a teenager, constantly posting this idiotic incorrect drivel here, instead of a 51-year-old.

Doug
 
Nardpuncher said:
Not to be a jerk, but this could've gone in that thread in Miscellaneous last month about "Stuff You're Surprised People Don't Know"
Click to expand...

I remember it was used as a brainteaser in math in the first or second grade, for me. Something like a choice between getting a thousand dollars every day for a month, or a penny on the first day, two pennies on the second, four on the third, and so on.

I may not have known the logic of it at the time, but I do recall that I sure as hell understood the concept of a trick question, and that the teacher wouldn't ask if it the apparent answer was correct.
 
This is bullshit! In a month, you'll have 31 cents, and that's in a long month. I don't know where youse guyz learnt your figgers, but at my school--

Hold on there, fellers. I have to count to twenty-one so I gots to lose the shoes and drop my drawers
 
T'Girl said:
But, but ... I thought they had no money!
Click to expand...
In TOS they had some sort of currency. That's established in "The Trouble With Tribbles" when Cyrano Jones is negotiating the price of selling his tribbles to the bar owner.
 
Also in "Mudd's Women" when Kirk talks about willing to pay a fair price to the miners for their dilithium crystals.

There seems to be some myth that TOS portrayed a money-free Federation, but references to currency use occur numerous times throughout the series.
 
A moneyless society would have sounded dangerously communist back in the sixties...
 
Doug
A-ha! I knew someone w/ more common sense would find a problem w/ my calculations. You're right. I was assuming he earned, each day, double the amount he earned on the previous day. But Sulu didn't say that. He just said that if he doubled the amount, each day, that he had on the previous day...duh.

So, yes, at the end of 28 days he'd have $1,342,177.28.

You'd think I was a teenager, constantly posting this idiotic incorrect drivel here, instead of a 51-year-old.

Doug
Click to expand...

Which by the way is (2 ^ 27) / 100 = $1,342,177.28
[2 raised to the 27th power and divided by 100.]


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\
 
ToddPence said:
There seems to be some myth that TOS portrayed a money-free Federation, but references to currency use occur numerous times throughout the series.
Click to expand...
I suspect this idea got started in TVH (where Kirk says "they're still using money") and perpetuated in TNG and then retconned into TOS.
 
Yeah, that old contradiction with the "we don't use money" yet still talking about buying and selling things.

Perhaps "they don't use money" refers to actual currency, in the form of metal coinage and paper bills. The Federation Credits they use to buy+sell exist only in electronic form, with subspace account transfers or whatever.

Does that make sense? Solve anything?
 
^^ That would suggest that the term "money" had come to mean strictly actual physical currency such as coins and bills or whatever. For that to happen the economy would have to be thoroughly electronic into every niche of society.

I still don't really accept that. If not human then certainly other societies could likely still be using some form of physical currency, and Earth would have to have some form of exchange to do business with them. Unless they resort to some sort of barter system.
 
The thing with the no money is just Trek wanting to have it both ways.
"Look...there's no money in the future! (fingers in ears) We're beyond money! Blah Blah I can't hear you!"
 
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