Bewildering Tragedy

According to the New York Times, 73 Filipinos died in a stampede of people hoping to be on a game show. The real puzzle, of course, is how such things happen and why crowds are so dangerous.

Another puzzle, though, is why the prize on the game show is $19,230. Why do other countries use such weird numbers? I mean, I guess any prize is going to be somewhat arbitrary, but at least in the United States we use nice round numbers. This is just another example of how much the developing world still has to learn from us.