Significant New Scientist

The current issue of New Scientist alerted me to a fantastic bit of over indulgence of the sig figs front. Apparently, UK company Photobox offer 250 megabytes of storage space for just £8.50212765957447. Astounding value.

£8.50212765957447 is of course the charge net of value added tax (VAT), which happens to be 17.5%. So, what’s the VAT inclusive cost I wonder…£9.99

D’oh!

Maybe it’s a little in-joke on the part of Photobox, in which case good on them!

Until New Scientist mentioned this huge level of financial accuracy, the Photobox site was the only one listed in Google to quote the number £8.50212765957447. Now, with SigFigs joining in there should be three within the next couple of days and if anyone quotes from this blog entry there might be more. This number could become more famous than pi…

…or maybe not.

(http://www.photobox.co.uk/shop/product.html?id=342)