Why Estimated Prices Don't Add Up

[TiberianSun371AlexW]

I get the price estimate is just that, an estimate and it isn’t going to be 100% accurate.

But they aren’t even consistent with themselves.

Ok imagine you have certain numbers. They are more than thousand. But they all end in “000.” If you add up the last 3 digits of all the numbers, you still end with “000.” And if you add up the entire numbers, your last 3 digits will end with “000.” In other words, no matter what integers you add up, if you take the last 3 (or n) digits, you will end up with a number whose last 3 (or n) digits are the same as the last 3 (or n) digits of the final number.

Where am I going with this? Put 30 things (or a combination of things and stacks of things) into your cargo hold. And note that the estimates of the cargo hold does not match the sum of the estimates of those items.

Why is this? I get the estimate is not going to be accurate, but why isn’t the estimated value of the cargohold the sum of the estimate of each stack?

[Altara_Zemara]

Its the rounding. For example an Amarr shuttle is estimated at 18,900 ISK, and 3600 units of Caldari Navy Antimatter M are estimated at 2.610,000. The sum is 2,628,900, but that is rounded to the nearest 10,000 so shows 2,630,000

[Gerard_Amatin]

It’s an estimate.

Those last digits are insignificant, most likely wrong anyway and irrelevant, so they simply show only the most significant digits in estimations.

If I have something estimated on a million ISK in my cargohold, but it could just as well be 20% more or less than that based on current market demand, why would I care that it shows me 1,000,091 instead of 1,000,000 if the value when sold on the market could just as well be anywhere between 0.8 million ISK and 1.2 million ISK?

It would suggest an accuracy that is completely misplaced.