Free Money

We decided to conduct a little experiment last year. We wanted to know, "How much money can you find on the street over the course of one year?" Toward that end, we set up a coffee cup in which we made all of our deposits. Here is the result from our experiment (see table below).

We found a total of 522 coins, for a total value of $20.19! That averages out to be about 5.53 cents a day. You wouldn't pass up a $20 bill would you? I doubt it. But most people do pass up pennies, which accounted for about a quarter of our total take. It's also interesting to note that your perceptions become tuned to finding coins when you start looking for them. We are attempting to replicate our findings this year (2007).

Update: Now that we've been doing this for 11 years, we have some historical data to share. Here is our performance over the years. Notice the outlier in 2012. That was because we found a $100 bill in a gas station in Las Vegas.

Year	Total	Pieces	Pennies	Nickels	Dimes	Quarters	$1 Bill	$5 Bill	$10 Bill	$20 bill	$100 bill
Total	$395.55	5553	4400	288	619	201	35	6	0	3	1
2006	$20.19	522	419	24	58	16	5
2007	$67.51	786	621	50	88	20	5			2
2008	$37.91	625	486	35	68	26	8	2
2009	$21.17	532	437	22	47	20	6
2010	$11.55	418	340	17	53	8
2011	$15.72	421	342	20	33	24	2
2012	$119.62	398	322	13	45	13	3	1			1
2013	$24.14	330	249	18	45	13	3	2
2014	$40.64	623	464	53	91	13	1			1
2015	$18.85	557	460	20	50	25	2
2016	$18.25	341	260	16	41	23		1

What is The Question that drives you?

Neo had his question ("What is the Matrix?"). Hamlet had his question ("To be or not to be...?"). What is the question that drives you? Have you found one, yet? I'm not sure if I have, but it's probably something close to, "How do people learn?" Alan Newell once said that it is the greatest achievement to have found the One Question that you spend the rest of your life seeking an answer. We should all be so lucky.