Math, it is hard

[walkitout]

I'm reading _David Crockett: Lion of the West_. It's kind of cool how the author both uses and credits (inline) work done by family genealogists in trying to make sense of Crockett ancestry.

However, there is this mysterious passage.

"On June 4, 1787, John sold the two hundred acres he had purchased four years earlier in Sullivan County for one hundred shillings for fifty pounds. [14] At the time of the transaction, both John and Rebecca signed the bill of sale, which brought them virtually no profit, since one pound sterling was worth about twenty shillings."

There's an error here. Where is it?

Purchase price: 100 shillings OR 5 pounds
Sales price: fifty pounds OR 1000 shillings

That's a 10 bagger, in investor-speak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_bagger). A ten bagger in four years is pretty cool. However, there was some post-revolution inflation which I'm having some trouble quantifying.

Where is the error?

(1) Basic math (my fave)
(2) Close to 10x inflation over the four years in question, unmentioned by the author but presumed to be known by the reader (which I do not know to be true)
(3) An author who thinks that a ten bagger in four years is "virtually no profit"
(4) Some other explanation that currently escapes my imagination?

I checked -- a pound really is 20 shillings, so _that_ is not the location of the error.

Note 14 ibids back to the previous note, which is: "Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 5."

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

The only other possibility I can think of is that the numbers were mistranscribed, but I find the same figures being used in this biography, which gives the transaction as an example of successful speculation: http://books.google.com/books?id=RhBdkc6p3UoC&pg=PA5. I suspect just bad math. Oh, and the Shackford book says the same: http://books.google.com/books?id=G4N12F08IkIC&pg=PA6

Transcription of original documents at http://travel.nostalgiaville.com/Tennessee/crockettinteresting.htm

North Carolina Land Grant No. 179 Page 196 (Sullivan Co. TN Deed Book 1)

To: JOHN CROCKETT

50 Shillings for every 100 acres; 200 acres in Sullivan Co., NC, on Lenvil Creek, ADJ: George HYMES, 10 Oct. 1783

(Sullivan Co., TN Deed Book 1)

Page 218 Deed fo Warranty 4 June 1787

John CROCKETT/CROCRITE OF Greene Co., NC

To: John WOODS of Sullivan Co., NC

L50 current money for 200 acres in Sullivan Co.,NC, on Lenvele Creek

ADJ : George HYMES

WIT: Elija Cross, James CANAWAY

Jones recognized the Crocketts making money

[walkitout]

Shackford did little more than repeat the details of the sale. The conclusion (they didn't make hardly any profit) seems novel to Wallis.

It's a _really recent book_ (2011 hardcover -- I saw the guy on the Daily Show and impulse purchased the kindle edition). This particular error requires _zero_ knowledge to catch (beyond doing very, very basic math -- and the unfamiliar conversion was even supplied in the text!). How did it make it through the editing process with this basic an error?

The most unfathomable aspect of this is that this is the _good_ transaction -- they lost money on other things, but not on this one. Arguably, this is the perfect example of how John Crockett was snake-bit: he's the guy who'd walk into a casino (not that he would), win big right away, and then blow all his winnings and extra two figuring he had it all under control. But failing to recognize that this particular transaction was a _spectacular_ success makes it impossible to see the pattern.

A _ten bagger_. In under 4 years. Hard money, probably. Like winning the lottery: you're almost doomed after.

Thanks, as always, for the impressive research!