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Gasoline Savings
by Andrew McCaskey
Slashdot Review Podcast
Sponsored in part by : WickedLasers.com the
world’s most powerful consumer laser.
A fun item yesterday from the Omninerd site concerning gasoline prices.
Author Brandon Hansen summarizes his study this way:
“Saving money on gas is important, but the hype around it may cause undo attention, especially considering the amount of money that could be saved on other things.”
The first example concerns his wife’s excellent memory. Once, while at Wal-Mart, she noticed the red peppers were especially expensive at $2.28. The local grocery specialty store , had them listed much cheaper at $1.23. Kroger had the cheapest price of all at $0.99 each – more than 55% savings over Wal-Mart.
But wait, that means that buying just one red pepper at Kroger instead of Wal-Mart would save more money ($1.29) than 25 gallons of gas priced a nickel cheaper. If he purchased two red peppers in the same manner, he would save enough money to fill up his Honda Accord with premium (instead of regular) and have enough leftover for a candy bar.
That put him on the trail of an interesting and well documented study that immediately moved into switching costs of various gas stations and calculation of the mean and standard deviation savings potential. Using those factors, and some detailed mapping software, Brandon was able to quantify and compare just about any expense, from gas prices to utilities, food to clothes, cigarettes to diapers.
You may have heard that great programming talent often have roots in laziness. Brandon reframes his analysis in terms of reduced energy input to saving money. It seemed obvious to him that the effort required to save money on pharmaceutical items would be much less than that required to save a proportional amount on gas.
He is especially rough on two classes of stores: Convenience stores and pharmacies. He calculated if he spent $125 a month on gasoline at a local Shell station, he could save $7.11 by switching to the QwikiMart for gas. If he spent an equal amount ($125 monthly) at Walgreens, however, he could save as much as $36.60 of that each month by switching to Walmart or Target.
It is truly an awe inspiring study – graphs, a sprinkling of math and extensive footnotes. I’d lay odds that he mapped the layout of his local grocery store into a shopping list a long time ago.
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