Ask clarifying questions
- What mall are we talking about? Or how big is it?
- What segment of people come to the mall?
- How many hours does the pick-pocketer work in a day or a week?
Create an overall formula
Annual income = weekly income *# of weeks worked
Weekly income can be divided in weekends and weekdays
Income on a day= # hours worked * # pockets picked in an hour * value of each pocket
Laying out the expectations
Let number of hours be constant say 8
Pockets picked per hour will depend on number of people in mall (more on weekends) and the size of mall (or # of shops)
# of people would also depend on the timings.
Let's divide every day into high traffic and low traffic, say 4 hours each.
Number of pockets picked by 1 pick-pocketer would also depend on the total number of pick-pocketers operating in the mall. Lets take that to be 4-5.
Analysis & Calculation
Total number of pockets picked:
- Weekdays: 1 per 4 hours in low traffic; 1 per 2 hours in high traffic hours
- Weekends: 1 per 2 hours in low traffic; 1 per hour in high traffic hours.
- That would make 3/day on weekday and 6/day on weekends.
Lets say he takes one weekday off, so he works for 4 weekdays and 2 weekend days
This makes a total of 34+62= almost 20 pockets a week.
Value of a pocket would be determined by what is contained in a pocket.
Let's say it would be cash or mobile. Let's say 90% pockets picked have cash and 10% mobile.
Per week he makes 18 cash pockets and 2 mobiles.
Let cash be ₹500-2000 so ₹700 on average and value of mobile if sold be somewhere between ₹4000-15000 so say ₹7000
That makes around 18₹700+2₹7000=almost ₹20000/week. Divided equally in the 4-5 pick-pocketers, makes it ₹4000-5000/week for each of them.
For number of weeks he's working, we can either take the whole year. But there might be time when he gets caught and doesn't work for 2-3 weeks. So let's say he works 40-45 weeks a year. That would make 5000*40=₹2,00,000/year
The pickpocket makes ₹2,00,000/year
💡 The sensitive parameters of this are the number of pockets picked per hour and the value of the pocket picked.