Talk:Clara MacBeth

Costs

 * The daily cost of living on the ship for her and Madoline LaBelle Frank, the widow who joined her, was $396. Without accounting for inflation, Cunard Line received $4 million from her in tickets. While living on the ship, the fares approximately cost MacBeth $20 million, according to a 2013 book.

This section is confusing and contradictory. It seems we have three different sources claiming three vastly different amounts spent on tickets - $2 million ($396 x 365 x 14), $4 million, and $20 (!) million. I can't access the first source, and it's not even totally clear to me that it's talking about ticket prices at all as opposed to on-ship expenses (although it would be weird for that to be a fixed amount). But the second and third clearly disagree with each other. IMO neither are really reliable sources. One is an art book and one is a coffee-table-style photo book, and their mentions of MacBeth are extremely brief, uncited, and in one case it even specifically calls the amount "estimated." Obviously at least one of these sources can't be trusted because of how different their numbers are, and IMO we should simply trust neither and remove this information until we can find a better one. -Elmer Clark (talk) 02:14, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * It occurs to me that the $20 million number might be inflation adjusted - that lines up if $2 million is the correct non-adjusted amount. But considering the book doesn't even give us enough information to conclude that as more than a guess... -Elmer Clark (talk) 02:17, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Needless to say I also think it is a problem that this is about to be used as a DYK hook - bringing this up there as well. -Elmer Clark (talk) 02:27, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * theleekycauldron removed a previous "inflation adjusted" before the $20M figure as WP:SYNTH, which I agree that it is, but I think the solution here is to not include that figure at all. The cited source is a one-sentence passing mention in a brief entry in an art book, so I wouldn't call that an RS. As to $2M vs. $4M, I'm not sure either. "$396 each" would explain the discrepancy, but I don't see the figure in the first source cited for it, can't find "Pencil Me In" on newspapers.com, and don't have access to "Hard-to-believe facts fill new record book". --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 03:41, 2 November 2022 (UTC)