Route 79

Wow. But how long would it take to go and collect all those 1.8m coins? And how much would that work out, per hour?

Interesting questions.

How long? Well - it would depend how many people were involved in the exercise I suppose. If we examine the extreme boundary points - then at one extreme - if you had 1.8M people to conduct the exercise - then if my theory is correct, tnen it would take less than 10 minutes to acheive. However, at the other extreme if it had to be accomplished by just one person - then I calculate the following:

* Assume human walking speed is 6km per hour.
* Assume total hours human can walk in a day is 10 hours.
* Assume field-width of human eye floor scan is 1m.
* Assume that all of UK area where 5p coins can be found is concentrated in 10 metropolitan areas: London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol, Nottingham, Leicester
* Assume that the travel between these urban conglomerations is made using train and public transport - outside walking time.

Total distance can cover in a day is therefore 60km. This will allow for a coin-can area of 60,000 sqare metres. Which is therefore 600 coin pickups. To cover all 180,000 hectares of land in the 10 metro areas would take (1.8 exp 9)/60000 = 30,000 days.

Now - if you assume that this is accomplished as if it were a job - i.e. the person takes holidys, weekends off and bank holidays etc. then you assume 210 working days in a year - which means that he whole exercise of collecting £90,000 will take 143 years.

If you work weekends and bank holidays and don't take any other hols - then you could do it 82 years.

So you can see that at this extreme it's not very practical for one person to be doing it - probably better for three people to do it (to allow for a sensible retirement period) - in which case it will take a third the time i.e. 47 years each.

Now moving on to the second question "how much per hour?"

Again - calculating this at both extremes:

If 1.8m people did this pickup exercise all together - then it would take 10 minutes - but each person will have earned 5p in that ten minutes. Which is a "notional" earning power of 30p per hour. (But a maximum earning limit of just 5p)

If, however, three people teamed up to achieve the task over a 47 year period. Then it would still be 30p an hour for earning power - but the maximum earning limit is now £30,000.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this:

1. This would not be a very efficient primary occupation.
2. The actual net result would be worse due to the above calculations not taking into account income tax and national insurance contributions.

Best regards - Jag

Very thorough answers Jag. Frighteningly thorough! 30 pence an hour, eh? I don't think I'll guve up my day job just yet then. The thought of someone actually doing the job reminds me a little of a Paul Auster's novel 'The Music of Chance' (also a film: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0107623), in which two men take the unusual job of builing a wall - stone by stone - to pay off their gambling debts to a pair of eccentric millionaires.

Indeed!

Must admit - haven't read the Paul Auster novel - but I'm going to check if the DVD rental service I use(http://www.dvdsontap.com)is carrying the film. Sounds like a whacky story! (IMDB comments claim that the film is a an exact translation of the novel.)

Best regards - Jag

Yes, the film is faithful to the novel pretty much word for word (at lest, from what I can remember), and features an excellent performance from James Spader.