Farewell to Neil Peart. His music has been part of my life from the start. 🥁😢
Things cost more than they used to
Friday, January 10, 2020
I’m delivering a seminar on estimating capital costs for large transit projects soon. One of the main concepts that seems to confuse people is inflation (including the non-intuitive terms nominal and real costs). To guide this discussion, I’ve pulled data from Statistics Canada on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to make a few points.
The first point is that, yes, things do cost more than they used to, since prices have consistently increased year over year (this is the whole point of monetary policy). I’m illustrating this with a long-term plot of CPI in Canada from 1914-01-01 to 2019-11-01.
I added in the images of candy bars to acknowledge my grandmother’s observation that, when she was a kid, candy only cost a penny. I also want to make a point that although costs have increased, we also now have a much greater diversity of candy to choose from. There’s an important analogy here for estimating the costs of projects, particulary those with a significant portion of machinery or technology assets.
The next point I want to make is that location matters, which I illustrate with a zoomed in look at CPI for Canada, Ontario, and Toronto.
This shows that over the last five years Toronto has seen higher price increases than the rest of the province and country. This has implications for project costing, since we may need to consider the source of materials and location of the project to choose the most appropriate CPI adjustment.
The last point I want to make is that the type of product also matters. To start, I illustrate this by comparing CPI for apples and alcoholic beverages (why not, there are 330 product types in the data and I have to pick a couple of examples to start).
In addition to showing how relative price inflation between products can change over time (the line for apples crosses the one for alcoholic beverages several times), this chart shows how short-term fluctuations in price can also differ. For example, the line for apples fluctuates dramatically within a year (these are monthly values), while alcoholic beverages is very smooth over time.
Once I’ve made the point with a simple example, I can then follow up with something more relevant to transit planners by showing how the price of transportation, public transportation, and parking have all changed over time, relative to each other and all-items (the standard indicator).
At least half of transit planning seems to actually be about parking, so that parking fees line is particularly relevant.
Making these charts is pretty straightforward, the only real challenge is that the data file is large and unwieldy. The code I used is here.
This Strong Songs episode on Stairway to Heaven is a fun listen and insightful analysis of a classic song 🎙
I finished Season 3 of The Leftovers, a fascinating exploration of loss, love, and family. Well worth watching if you like mysterious plots and unresolved narratives. The actors and writing are great and the ending is satisfying. 📺
I really enjoyed this Mindscape podcast episode with Dan Dennett 🎙
The snow wasn’t great, but still nice to get out for a ski this weekend.
Bob Boilen’s Top 20 Albums For 2019 is a good list
Where to start? 📚
We take Boxing Day seriously here as a day of relaxation. So, I’m disappointed to have exceeded my 0 minutes target. The spike around 2 was when I went upstairs for a nap 😴
Wednesday, December 25, 2019 →
The Labo VR kit is great fun to build and play
I’m most certainly in the target demographic, so perhaps not surprising that I enjoyed For All Mankind. I like these sorts of alternative histories and space exploration is a fascinating topic. I’m looking forward to whatever comes in season 2. 📺
The Stiehl Assassin by Terry Brooks is okay. Given this is the last series he plans to write, I’m curious to see where he takes the fourth book. Based on the three books so far, the plot is pretty standard for Shannara series. I’d hoped for something more dramatic.
After the original series, I think the Genesis of Shannara series is the most inventive one. 📚
Great fun with my siblings last night on our annual Christmas dinner adventure. Storm Crow Manor was very entertaining with nerd-themed drinks.
I declared podcasts bankruptcy and recovered with a better curated subscription list 🎧👍
Declaring podcasts bankruptcy
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Podcasts are great. I really enjoy being able to pick and choose interesting conversations from such a broad swath of topics. Somewhere along the way though, I managed to subscribe to way more than I could ever listen to and the unlistened count was inducing anxiety (I know, a real first world problem).
So, time to start all over again and only subscribe to a chosen few:
- Quirks & Quarks is the one I’ve been subscribed to the longest and is a reliable overview of interesting science stories. I’ve been listening to this one for so long that I used to rely on an AppleScript to get episodes into my original scroll wheel iPod, well before podcasts were embraced by Apple.
- In Our Time is another veteran on my list. I really like the three-academics format and Melvyn Bragg is a great moderator. This show has a fascinating diversity of topics in science, history, and literature.
- All Songs Considered has helped me keep up with the latest music and Bob Boilen is a very good interviewer.
- The Talk Show has kept me up to date on the latest in Apple and related news since at least 2007.
- Exponent has really helped me think more clearly about strategy with discussions of tech and society.
- Focused has been a very helpful biweekly reminder to think more carefully about what I’m working on and how to optimize my systems.
- Making Sense has had reliably interesting discussions from Sam Harris. It just recently went behind a paywall. But I’m happy to pay for it, which comes with access to the Waking Up app.
- I admire what Jesse Brown has built with CANADALAND and happily support it.
- Reconcilable Differences is a bit niche, though I enjoy the dynamics between the hosts.
- Mindscape has had some of the most interesting episodes of any of my subscriptions in the last several months. There’s definitely a bias towards quantum mechanics and physics, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
- Liftoff keeps me up to date on space news.
- The Incomparable is great for geek culture.
When all together on a list like this, it looks like a lot. Many are biweekly though, so they don’t accumulate.
I use Overcast for listening to these. I’ve tried many other apps and this one has the right mix of features and simplicity for me. I also appreciate the freedom of the Apple Watch integration which allows me to leave my phone at home and still have podcasts to listen to.
A mind bending discussion on the Making Sense podcast: what we perceive as reality is only a “user interface wrapper” that natural selection has created to enhance our fitness. It has no necessary mapping to the truth of reality.
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is an imaginative literary romance novel wrapped in a time travel espionage plot. I really enjoyed it, though it was not at all like my usual sci-fi reading 📚
Gamer
I’ve just bumped up my monthly support of CANADALAND to the next tier. Plenty of great content that I’m happy to pay for.
Great fun at the Axe Pancreatic Cancer fundraiser last night! Thanks to everyone that joined us to raise money to support two promising clinical trials.
