Help me make sense of this?

[drwex]

Maybe it's just a simple typo, maybe people like to inflate numbers, but here we go...

ETA: I'm just bad at math. Move along, point and laugh.

Story: http://www.boston.com/business/news/2013/07/25/russians-ukrainian-charged-massive-hacking/zj9q9jvyKAKT6FTgD7YdLI/singlepage.html

Crackers stole a whole lot of CC numbers from a lot of places over a period of time.

Princeton-based Heartland Payment Systems Inc., which processes credit and debit cards for small to mid-sized businesses, was identified as taking the biggest hit in a scheme starting in 2007 — the theft of more than 130 million card numbers at a loss of about $200 million.

Now, my math says that if you lost 130 million numbers and 200 million dollars that's somewhere north of $1,000,000 per card number. I have what I think is a reasonably high limit on my credit card, and even if I ran my card to the limit and it somehow didn't get noticed, it would take over 3.5 years for me to run up a million dollars in charges.

So, wtf? How is that even a possible number. Let's assume that Heartland lost the other 70 million in costs of tracking and repairing the theft damage, which seems high as well. That still leaves a huge number.

Comments

[taura-g.livejournal.com]

Um, Luv, double check your numbers... 200,000,000/130,000,000=$1.53 per card....

[gsh]

My math says that if you lost 130 million numbers, and 200 million dollars, that is less than two dollars per number.

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

This is the kind of calculation error I would make. Seeing you, an MIT PhD, make it makes me feel better about my dyscalculia.

[drwex]

I have long said that I'm the most innumerate person ever to get an MIT PhD.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I believe you now. :-)

My husband -- the guy with a Princeton PhD in Computer Science, who teaches that subject at Tufts -- asks me to calculate the tip when we go out to a restaurant, because he has trouble figuring out what 15 - 20% of our bill should be. He often makes simple errors in basic arithmetic. Advanced mathematics is no problem for him, but basic calculations are a problem.

The workings of people's minds fascinate me, so I find all of this wildly interesting. :-)