Another Sunday to play with big numbers.

Anyone who has been to London must have noticed the numerous cameras observing you, like some strange proto-Orwellian social experiment.

Why have they built such a system? The theory goes: to reduce crime, and create safety, etc. But practice tends to disagree.

According to an internal policy report, it takes about 1000 cameras to solve 1 crime.

What if only CCTV cameras were used to solve crime?

London metropolitan area (note: this excludes the City) had 844911 number of crimes for fiscal year 2008-2009. To solve all crimes with only CCTV cameras, you’d need 844911000 cameras – that’s 845 million.

There’s 7.5 million people living in Greater London area. With a total of 845 million cameras, that would be about 113 cameras per person.

Currently there’s over a million cameras in the greater London area, including private-installed CCTV cameras. This is roughly one camera per 1576 m² (Greater London area minus City is about 1576 km²).

With 845 million cameras, there would be roughly one camera every 2 m². Your average 30 m² home would then have 15 cameras.

And then, even though there would still be crime taking place, all of it could be solved! Take that, bandits! Hooray!

(Yeah, instead of more cameras, why not just hire more policemen instead – it would probably be cheaper too)