= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
bramflakes comments on Open thread, 24-30 March 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (156)
Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion. What makes this, and so many other large deals, such clean numbers? Are the press rounding the details? Are the companies only releasing approximate or estimate numbers? Can the value of a company like Oculus really not be estimated to the nearest 10%? Or do these whole numbers just serve as nice Schelling points on which to hinge a bargain? Or am I forgetting lots of ugly-numbered deals?
(WhatsApp purchase was 2 significant figures, and this list on Wikipedia does show mostly 2-3 significant figures though some figures are probably converted from other currencies.)
In cases like this, a large portion of the "money" paid is actually in the form of shares, which can vary wildly on a day-to-day basis (especially during a takeover!). It doesn't make sense to specify the value of it too precisely because nobody knows what the shares are going to be worth tomorrow.
That's a good reason for the press to round such figures, but the actual figure is round, on the day it was decided, and that itself is mysterious.