Editing 2892: Banana Prices
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | + | {{incomplete|Created by a $10 BANANA - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | |
− | + | [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw ‘It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?'] is a line from an {{w|Arrested Development}} episode (Season 1, Episode 6, "Visiting Ours", 2003) that became well known as a meme used to mock out-of-touch elites. The character who spoke this line -- Lucille Bluth, a rich socialite -- didn't know whether a banana cost $10 in 2003 because she never did any grocery shopping "because we have people for that." According to the graph, the banana price at the time of that episode was actually just under 25 cents. | |
− | + | This comic has many layers of meaning and uses an "unreliable narrator" device to initially mislead the reader. | |
− | + | At first, it looks like a wry observation that the irony of this sitcom line will be obsolete in a century or two. This comic shows three different "linear" extrapolations of the current increasing trend in banana prices, using a graph of historic banana prices and a series of projected future prices based upon relevant price trends. The comic seems to say that the irony of the sitcom quote is likely to be anachronistically meaningless within a century or two, assuming these particular extrapolations are accurate. | |
− | The | + | Upon closer inspection, it's apparent that the caption-writer is making some absurd assumptions about inflation continuing as its current usually high levels. The caption writer, in this case, is an unreliable narrator who is also humorously out-of-touch. If inflation returns to its recent historic norm of 2%, as it is likely to do, then it will take many centuries for the price of a banana to rise past $10. The current rate of inflation – around 5% in the US – is much higher than the historical average from the past several decades, and if recent historical trends dominate, inflation is likely to revert back to the more typical 1-to-2% range in the near term (next 5 to 10 years), and is rather unlikely to continue at 5% for the next century. |
− | The title text | + | The title text is a wink about this unreliable narrator by using the voice of Lucille Bluth to wryly point out that error of the extrapolations greatly exceeds 10%. It does so in the form of a meta-joke about the false precision of extrapolations, while continuing the theme of the speaker's extreme ignorance. First of all, while these extrapolations look linear, they are in fact logarithmic, since a straight line extrapolation on a graph with a logarithmic scale is actually a logarithmic extrapolation. (The graph is drawn to a logarithmic vertical scale on the vertical (left) axis, which makes it possible to visualize exponential price-rise as a the dotted line.) |
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− | + | Secondly, any extrapolation into the distant future based on past data points is just an educated guess likely to be at least somewhat wrong. However, it could very well be quite wrong, with an error far in excess of 10%. Assuming that the error couldn't be more than 10% shows that the speaker continues to be hilariously off-base, presuming far more accuracy from a multi-century prediction than is warranted. | |
− | + | Future prices are subject to many factors, and a 10% error rate in a 100-year linear extrapolcation is exeedingly optimistic. For instance, if there was a massive banana crash or {{w|Gros Michel banana|extinction}} due to {{w|Banana#Pests, diseases, and natural disasters|supply issues}}, the sharply recuded supply of bananas could send the price past $10 very quickly. | |
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− | + | Log scales are a recurring XKCD theme, and this is the second comic in a row to involve logarithms (the prior one being [[2891: Log Cabin]]). It's also the second comic in the last four to involve prediction across centuries (i.e. [[2889: Greenhouse Effect]]). The title text then continues with a meta-joke along the same theme in which the possible error in 'slope' is similarly subject to hyperbole, but quoting ten ''percent'' (a proportional change) rather than ten ''dollars'' (a price threshold). | |
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==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | ||
− | :[A graph with the x-axis showing time, from the years 1950 to around 2275. The y-axis is a log scale showing the price of a banana | + | :[A graph with the x-axis showing time, from the years 1950 to around 2275. The y-axis is a log scale showing the price of a banana. A label called "Price of a banana (BLS/St. Louis Fred[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/])" show a rising trend in the price of a banana. There are two dots on that trend. One is labeled "Episode airs" and the other one "Now". 3 extrapolations labeled "General inflation rate", "Fresh fruit price trend" and "Banana price trend" extend until reaching the $10 mark, indicated by 3 dots.] |
− | : | + | :Caption above the graph : "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10? |
− | : | + | :Caption below comic : That line probably has another century or so left. |
{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} | ||
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