Howie Carr Flunks Math!

In today's Boston Herals Howie Carr has a great article about the leaky Big Dig Tunnel, SpongeBob Tunnel simply leaving taxpayers all wet:

They're going to make a movie about the Big Dig. They'll call it ``The Poseidon Adventure.'' Or maybe ``15 Billion Dollars Under the Sea.'' Or ``Voyage to the Bottom of the Tunnel.'' Another day, another flood.

He then goes on to talk about how much money they've gotten back from contractors:

So far, on a $14.6 billion project, they've recovered $3.5 million.

That would be like if you hired a guy to fix the roof on your house for $10,000, and the first time it rained, the water was coming in from every nook and cranny in your home. And then the contractor told you, hey, that's a shame, so I'm going to give you a refund - here's $30.

That math looks wrong to me.

Isn't $14.6 million to $3.5 million as $10,000 is to $2,400?

Update - Steve Garfield Flunks Math too:
Oops. Made a little typo up there. I was calculating in Millions not Billions! Billions? Who uses Billions? I tried to recalculate the math, but my calculator gave me an error.

Can some smart person figure out this math problem for me:

$14.6 billion is to $3.5 million as $10,000 is to X

Phil gives me the formula:

x=(10,000/14.6 billion)*3.5 million

I had to put it into Excel to figure it out, and come up with $2.39726

Rob emailed me with his answer:

X = 2.39726 - roughly $2.40

Thanks guys.

So we've proved that Howie Carr's math was wrong.

Oh happy day.