ChartTrack’s report of the PS3 Slim boosting UK sales up 999% seemed like an impressive statistic, but without a little context and hard numbers, the percentage doesn’t hold a lot of meaning. The math wizards of MCV did a little number crunching and math voodoo to come up with an estimate of actual units sold in the UK. They report that about 40,000 PS3 Slim units were sold.

How exactly did they come up with that number? MCV looked at the PS2 Slim sales in the UK in its first week, which was reportedly 50,000 units. Sony claimed that PS3 Slim sales in the UK were 20% behind the PS2 Slim, thus making the final tally 40,000 units. This also shows that in the previous week before the launch of the PS3 Slim, Sony only sold about 4,000 PS3s.

Sony has yet to comment on the final sales figures, but the math seems to hold up. In other news, Nintendo will require news outlets to figure out DS sales by solving a math problem on Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.