Category Archives: australia

Empire Games

Many readers have been expecting me to post a follow-up to my Olympic analysis of four years ago. I was in fact expecting it myself and even started collecting data, but somehow it has not happened. Fortunately, regular contributor (and some time beer coaster calculator), James Glover has stepped into the void.

It’s at about this time every four years that the same old boring analysis of Olympic Medals [not for everyone! Ed.] is brought out showing Olympic medals per capita, per GDP, per dollar spent etc. While this is all very useful, this particular Olympics it has failed to show Australia “punching above its weight” and is thus, in reality, the dominant sporting nation not just on the planet, but in the whole of history as well. The Fairfax press has tried to prove this thesis, but there is a spoiler. However you cut it we came out of the top half dozen nations. Personally I don’t think coming 10th in the gold medal count is really that bad. At least we beat the Kiwis right? Hmmm, that gets me thinking…

Actually it also occurs to me that were we just to reach out across the Ditch and extend a filial hand to our beloved New Zealand cousins, combined our trans-Tasman teams and competed under an ANZAC flag we would have finished an even more respectable 5th just behind Russia.

So this got me thinking. How would other groups of nations, alliances or indeed, past empires, have fared in the Games of the XXXth Olympiad? I can’t guarantee my geography is precise (and it is not up for discussion) but here is my best take on it. For these purposes I have not included the US in the British Empire because frankly it was their choice to leave without seeking permission.

In the interests of fairness I have allocated only part of the tally in some cases to take into account that (i) the Romans did not conquer Scotland or Ireland (so 50% of Team GB), and (ii) Quebec is not part of the Anglosphere (so they only get 75% of Canada’s tally – this on advice of a non-Quebecois Canadian). Feel free to continue this game – Axis vs Allies, the French Empire of Bonaparte vs British Empire at the same time. Endless fun now our cold winter days are no longer warmed by the Olympic flame. Interesting to see that in terms of Empires the British come behind the Mongolian Empire and the Roman Empire wins on weighted medals (3,2,1) if not on gold medals alone.

In any event the result proves the strongest alliance of all time is NATO – both the strongest military alliance and, if they wished, the strongest sporting one. Maybe money doesn’t buy you medals but it would seem that missiles do!

Empire/Alliance	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Weighted	% Total
NATO	138	129	139	406	811	45%
EU	95	96	103	294	580	32%
Anglosphere	98	73.75	79	249.5	520	29%
Roman Empire	68	79	72.5	219.5	435	24%
Mongolian Empire	75	54	64	193	397	22%
British Empire	58	58	71	186	361	20%
Soviet Union	45	41	67	153	284	16%
ANZAC	14	18	17	48	95	5.3%

More on the Hottest 100

1 Reply

Following on from the last post on the Hottest 100, I received a few tweets from @mjdart demanding a deeper dive into the data. One of his questions was

Of artists charting in at least 5 yrs, are Oz artists higher represented?

I decided to broaden the questions to look at artists with at least five tracks in Hottest 100s (so artists with two tracks in one year and one track in three other years would be in). On this criterion, Australia still comes out on top.

Number of artists with at least 5 “Hot” tracks

In the last post, I complained that 2010 data is currently missing from Wikipedia. It seems that this is because Wikipedia is yet to get permission from the ABC. I have decided to risk the wrath of Auntie and have posted the full chart in the table at the bottom of the post. Having pieced it together, I have updated my original chart to include 2010.

As you can see, 2010 was a good year for Australian artists. It also turns out that the artist with the most Hottest 100 tracks is also Australian: Powderfinger. Here are all the artists with at least 10 Hottest 100 tracks.

Artist	Count	Country
Powderfinger	22	Australia
Foo Fighters	20	United States
Grinspoon	17	Australia
Silverchair	17	Australia
Muse	16	United Kingdom
The Living End	16	Australia
Regurgitator	15	Australia
Pearl Jam	14	United States
Placebo	14	United Kingdom
You Am I	14	Australia
Green Day	13	United States
Something for Kate	13	Australia
Eskimo Joe	12	Australia
Garbage	12	United States
Red Hot Chili Peppers	12	United States
Hilltop Hoods	11	Australia
Radiohead	11	United Kingdom
Spiderbait	11	Australia
The White Stripes	11	United States
The Whitlams	11	Australia
Wolfmother	11	Australia
Beck	10	United States
Ben Harper	10	United States
Jebediah	10	Australia
Metallica	10	United States
Rage Against the Machine	10	United States
The Strokes	10	United States

UPDATE:

@mjdart asked another question which I thought I should also answer:

@stubbornmule If you assign 100 pts for #1 thru 1 pt for #100 each year, is Oz proportion higher/lower? eg Oz filling out top or bottom 50?

To answer this, I assigned 100 points for the top spot, 99 points for the second and so on down to one point for last place. I summed the score for each country and then scaled it by dividing by 50.5. This odd choice arises because 100 + 99 + 98 + … + 2 + 1 = 5050 and so dividing by 50.5 would give a score of 100 for a country that managed to win every spot in the top 100. This makes the score directly comparable to a simple count of places in the top 100. So, how does this weighted score compare to a simple count? The answer, evident in the chart below is not much! So, each country’s artists must be fairly evenly spread through the top 100 over time.

Finally, here is the complete listing of the 2010 Hottest 100, including country of origin. If you are feeling brave, you may wish to update Wikipedia. Just keep in mind, the list may be deleted again if the ABC does not provide permission for the list to be published!

Rank	Title	Artist	Country
1	Big Jet plane	Angus & Julia Stone	Australia
2	Rock It	Little Red	Australia
3	Dance The Way I Feel	Ou Est Le Swimming Pool	England
4	Plans	Birds Of Tokyo	Australia
5	Fall At Your Feet	Boy & Bear	Australia
6	Teenage Crime	Adrian Lux	Sweden
7	Fuck You!	Cee Lo Green	United States
8	Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)	The Wombats	England
9	Magic Fountain	Art Vs. Science	Australia
10	Somebody To Love Me {Ft. Boy George & Andrew Wyatt}	Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.	England
11	ABC News Theme {Remix}	Pendulum	Australia
12	Rapunzel	Drapht	Australia
13	Clap Your Hands	Sia	Australia
14	Runaway {Ft. Pusha T}	Kanye West	United States
15	Barbara Streisand	Duck Sauce	United States
16	Mace Spray	The Jezabels	Australia
17	Bang Bang Bang {Ft. MNDR & Q-Tip}	Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.	England
18	There’s Nothing In The Water We Can’t Fight	Cloud Control	Australia
19	Crave You {Ft. Giselle}	Flight Facilities	Australia
20	Sunday Best	Washington	Australia
21	Undercover MartynU	Two Door Cinema Club	Northern Ireland
22	Jellylegs	Children Collide	Australia
23	Addicted	Bliss N Eso	Australia
24	Talking Like I’m Falling Down Stairs	Sparkadia	Australia
25	Eyes Wide Open	Gotye	Australia
26	Not In Love {Ft. Robert Smith}	Crystal Castles	Canada
27	You’ve Got The Dirtee Love {Live}	Florence & The Machine/Dizzee Rascal	England
28	Radar Detector	Darwin Deez	United States
29	It Can Wait {Ft. Owl Eyes}	Illy	Australia
30	O.N.E	Yeasayer	United States
31	Bloodbuzz Ohio	The National	United States
32	Pumped Up Kicks	Foster The People	United States
33	Solitude Is Bliss	Tame Impala	Australia
34	Punching In A Dream	The Naked And Famous	New Zealand
35	The Bike Song {Ft. Kyle Falconer & Spank Rock}	Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.	England
36	Opposite Of Adults	Chiddy Bang	United States
37	Doncamatic {Ft. Daley}	Gorillaz	England
38	Young Blood	The Naked And Famous	New Zealand
39	Revolution	John Butler Trio	Australia
40	Baby, I’m Getting Better	Gyroscope	Australia
41	Down By The River	Bliss N Eso	Australia
42	On Melancholy Hill	Gorillaz	England
43	We No Speak Americano	Yolanda Be Cool	Australia
44	Baptism	Crystal Castles	Canada
45	Rabbit Song	Boy & Bear	Australia
46	Way Back Home	Bag Raiders	Australia
47	Wild At Heart	Birds Of Tokyo	Australia
48	Witchcraft	Pendulum	Australia
49	Easy To Love	The Jezabels	Australia
50	One Life Stand	Hot Chip	England
51	Ambling	Yeasayer	United States
52	Overpass	The John Steel Singers	Australia
53	Reflections	Bliss N Eso	Australia
54	Holidays {Ft. Alan Palomo}	Miami Horror	Australia
55	Giving Up The Gun	Vampire Weekend	United States
56	Bring Night	Sia	Australia
57	Kickstarts	Example	England
58	The Suburbs	Arcade Fire	Canada
59	Rich Kids	Washington	Australia
60	My Eagle	Children Collide	Australia
61	Jackson’s Last Stand	Ou Est Le Swimming Pool	England
62	Hold On	Angus and Julia Stone	Australia
63	Ready To Start	Arcade Fire	Canada
64	Jona Vark	Gypsy & The Cat	Australia
65	One Step	Dead Letter Circus	Australia
66	Audience =	Cold War Kids	United States
67	Holiday	Vampire Weekend	United States
68	Dog {Ft. Lisa Mitchell}	Andy Bull	Australia
69	Watercolour	Pendulum	Australia
70	Paper Romance	Groove Armada	England
71	Piper’s Song	Gypsy & The Cat	Australia
72	I Can Talk	Two Door Cinema Club	Northern Ireland
73	Time To Wander	Gypsy & The Cat	Australia
74	Lucidity	Tame Impala	Australia
75	Coming Around	Hungry Kids Of Hungary	Australia
76	Radioactived	Kings Of Leon	United States
77	Shutterbugg {Ft. Cutty}	Big Boi	United States
78	Stylo {Ft. Bobby Womack and Mos Def}	Gorillaz	England
79	Slow Motion Slow Motion	Little Red	Australia
80	Howlin’ For You Howlin’ For You	The Black Keys	United States
81	Echoes Echoes	Klaxons	England
82	Tighten Up Tighten Up	The Black Keys	United States
83	Modern Man Modern Man	Arcade Fire	Canada
84	The Hardest Part The Hardest Part	Washington	Australia
85	I Feel Better I Feel Better	Hot Chip	England
86	Queensland Queensland	Evil Eddie	Australia
87	The Saddest Thing I Know The Saddest Thing I Know	Birds Of Tokyo	Australia
88	Monster {Ft. JAY-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj & Bon Iver}	Kanye West	United States
89	Barricade Barricade	Interpol	United States
90	Finally See Our Way Finally See Our Way	Art Vs. Science	Australia
91	Northcote (So Hungover)	The Bedroom Philosopher	Australia
92	I Can ChangeI Can Change	LCD Soundsystem	United States
93	Anyone’s Ghost Anyone’s Ghost	The National	United States
94	Time To Smile Time To Smile	Xavier Rudd	Australia
95	The High Road The High Road	Broken Bells	United States
96	Go Do Go Do	Jonsi	Iceland
97	Sleepwalker	Parkway Drive	Australia
98	Spanish Sahara	Foals	England
99	BigBig	Dead Letter Circus	Australia
100	Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)	Muse	England

Hottest 100 for 2011

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Another year, another Australia Day. Another Australia Day, another Triple J Hottest 100. And that, of course, means an excellent excuse to set R to work on the chart data.

For those outside Australia, the Hottest 100 is a chart of the most popular songs of the previous year, as voted by the listeners of the radio station Triple J. The tradition began in 1991, but initially people voted for their favourite song of all time. From 1993 onwards, the poll took its current form* and was restricted to tracks released in the year in question.

Since the Hottest 100 Wikipedia pages include country of origin**, I thought I would see whether there is any pattern in whose music Australians like best. Since it is Australia Day, it is only appropriate that we are partial to Australian artists and they typically make up close to half of the 100 entries. Interestingly, in the early 90s, Australian artists did not do so well. The United Kingdom has put in a good showing over the last two years, pulling ahead of the United States. Beyond the big three, Australia, UK and US, the pickings get slim very quickly, so I have only included Canada and New Zealand in the chart below.

Number of Hottest 100 tracks by Country

If you have excellent eyesight, you may notice that 2010 is missing from the chart. For some reason, this is the only year which does not include the full chart listing on the Wikipedia page. There is a link to a list on the ABC website, but unfortunately it does not include the country of origin. Maybe a keen Wikipedian reading this post will help by updating the page.

I make no great claims for the sophistication or the insight of this analysis: it was really an excuse to learn about using the XML package for R to pull data from tables in web pages.

require(XML)
require(ggplot2)
require(reshape2)

results <- data.frame()
col.names <- c("year", "rank", "title", "artist", "country")

# Skip 2010: full list is missing from Wikipedia page
years <- c(1993:2009, 2011)

for (year in years) {
    base.url <- "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_J_Hottest_100,"
    year.url <- paste(base.url, year, sep="_")
    tables <- readHTMLTable(year.url, stringsAsFactor=FALSE)
    table.len <- sapply(tables, length)
    hot <- cbind(year=year, tables[[which(table.len==4)]])
    names(hot) <- col.names
    results <- rbind(results, hot)
}

# Remap a few countries
results$country[results$country=="Australia [1]"] <- "Australia"
results$country[results$country=="England"] <- "United Kingdom"
results$country[results$country=="Scotland"] <- "United Kingdom"
results$country[results$country=="Wales"] <- "United Kingdom"
results$country[results$country=="England, Wales"] <-"United Kingdom"

# Countries to plot
top5 <- c("Australia", "United States", "United Kingdom",
  "Canada", "New Zealand")

# Create a colourful ggplot chart
plt <- ggplot(subset(results, country %in% top5),
    aes(factor(year), fill=factor(country)))
plt <- plt + geom_bar() + facet_grid(country ~ .)
plt <- plt + labs(x="", y="") + opts(legend.position = "none")

Created by Pretty R at inside-R.org

UPDATE: there is a little bit more analysis in this follow-up post.

* Since the shift to single year charts, there have been two all-time Hottest 100s: 1998 and 2009.

** There are some country combinations, such as “Australia/England”, but the numbers are so small I have simply excluded them from the analysis.

Where is the cheapest petrol?

3 Replies

For some time now, I have been meaning to have a look at Beautiful Soup, a python library designed to make it easy to scrape data from web-sites. Now that I have finally tried it out, I wish I had got to it sooner. It really is very handy and easy to use.

As my first Soup project, I turned to an old Mule favourite: petrol data. The Australian Institute of Petroleum (AIP) publishes retail petrol price data, which it sources in turn from MotorMouth. The price data is spread across individual pages for each state, like this one for Victoria and there are separate pages for unleaded and diesel. It would be nice to pull together all of the data and, since the pages are all laid out in exactly the same way and there is a straightforward naming convention for the urls of each page, this is very easy to do using Beautiful Soup. You can see the results showing average weekly petrol prices for the week ending 18 December in the table below.

With all the data in hand, the obvious questions to ask are: where is the cheapest petrol and where is the most expensive petrol? As you can see in the chart below, Adelaide came in as the cheapest place to fill your tank in late December at 134.9 cent/L, while Broome was the most expensive at 165.9, an impressive 23% mark up over Adelaide.

Top 10 and bottom 10 unleaded petrol prices
(average for the week ending 18 December 2011)

Of course this only gives a snapshot at a point in time: Adelaide may not always offer such good value for money and Broome residents may not always pay such a premium. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any historical data by town on the AIP website. So I have set my data-scraping routine up to collect the data each week. Some time late this year I will revisit this data to see if any patterns emerge over time.

State	Town	Weekly Average
NSW	Albury	135.5
NSW	Armidale	143.6
NSW	Ballina	146.9
NSW	Batemans Bay	144.3
NSW	Bathurst	145.9
NSW	Bega	150.1
NSW	Broken Hill	145.9
NSW	Bulahdelah	138.1
NSW	Buronga	146
NSW	Canberra	146.4
NSW	Casino	144.8
NSW	Central Coast	143.2
NSW	Coffs Harbour	147
NSW	Cooma	150.3
NSW	Cootamundra	149.2
NSW	Deniliquin	148.9
NSW	Dubbo	143.1
NSW	Forbes	147.5
NSW	Forster	146.9
NSW	Glen Innes	141.9
NSW	Goulburn	141.9
NSW	Grafton	146.3
NSW	Griffith	144.4
NSW	Gundagai	141.7
NSW	Gunnedah	144
NSW	Hay	145.8
NSW	Inverell	146.9
NSW	Kempsey	146.2
NSW	Leeton	145.5
NSW	Lismore	144.5
NSW	Lithgow	139.9
NSW	Mittagong	149.9
NSW	Moama	145.9
NSW	Moree	148.8
NSW	Moruya	147.6
NSW	Moss Vale	142.1
NSW	Mudgee	150.4
NSW	Murwillumbah	143.1
NSW	Muswellbrook	146.6
NSW	Newcastle	144.3
NSW	Nowra	144.8
NSW	Orange	147.4
NSW	Parkes	146.7
NSW	Port Macquarie	146.5
NSW	Queanbeyan	146.6
NSW	Singleton	143.8
NSW	Sydney	138.2
NSW	Tamworth	145.7
NSW	Taree	144.9
NSW	Temora	148
NSW	Tumut	145.9
NSW	Tweed Heads South	141
NSW	Ulladulla	143.9
NSW	Wagga Wagga	144.9
NSW	Wauchope	143.6
NSW	West Wyalong	149.9
NSW	Wollongong	143
NSW	Woolgoolga	145.7
NSW	Yass	148.4
NT	Alice Springs	163.4
NT	Darwin	151.8
NT	Katherine	146.3
NT	Tennant Creek	164
QLD	Atherton	145.3
QLD	Ayr	145.6
QLD	Biloela	148.6
QLD	Blackall	157.8
QLD	Blackwater	148.2
QLD	Bowen	146.2
QLD	Brisbane	141.3
QLD	Bundaberg	144
QLD	Cairns	146
QLD	Charters Towers	149.4
QLD	Childers	142.9
QLD	Dalby	142.4
QLD	Emerald	146.9
QLD	Gladstone	143.5
QLD	Gold Coast	141.3
QLD	Goondiwindi	148
QLD	Gympie	143.3
QLD	Hervey Bay	143.9
QLD	Ingham	142.9
QLD	Innisfail	145.3
QLD	Kingaroy	143.7
QLD	Longreach	153.9
QLD	Mackay	141.2
QLD	Mareeba	145.9
QLD	Maryborough	143.2
QLD	Miles	151.3
QLD	Moranbah	146.5
QLD	Mt Isa	150.4
QLD	Rockhampton	148.8
QLD	Roma	148.9
QLD	Sunshine Coast	141
QLD	Toowoomba	139.6
QLD	Townsville	141.9
QLD	Tully	148.9
QLD	Warwick	143.7
QLD	Whitsunday	138.5
QLD	Yeppoon	148.6
SA	Adelaide	134.9
SA	Bordertown	147.9
SA	Ceduna	150.6
SA	Clare	138.2
SA	Coober Pedy	160.4
SA	Kadina	139.4
SA	Keith	145.9
SA	Loxton	147.8
SA	Mt Gambier	146.2
SA	Murray Bridge	140.6
SA	Naracoorte	143.9
SA	Port Augusta	138.4
SA	Port Lincoln	145.2
SA	Port Pirie	139.1
SA	Renmark	142
SA	Tailem Bend	146.4
SA	Victor Harbour	142.9
SA	Whyalla	143.5
TAS	Burnie	150.3
TAS	Devonport	149.8
TAS	Hobart	150.2
TAS	Huonville	149.9
TAS	Launceston	149.9
TAS	New Norfolk	149.9
TAS	Smithton	149.5
TAS	Sorell	144.9
TAS	Ulverstone	149.9
TAS	Wynard	152.5
VIC	Ararat	143.1
VIC	Bairnsdale	139.6
VIC	Ballarat	144.4
VIC	Benalla	145.9
VIC	Bendigo	142.4
VIC	Cobram	142.5
VIC	Colac	145.9
VIC	Corryong	148.2
VIC	Echuca	145.9
VIC	Euroa	140.2
VIC	Geelong	136.3
VIC	Hamilton	146
VIC	Horsham	145
VIC	Koo Wee Rup	139.5
VIC	Kyabram	143.9
VIC	Leongatha	142.9
VIC	Melbourne	137.9
VIC	Mildura	147.5
VIC	Moe	139.9
VIC	Morwell	142.9
VIC	Portland	146.9
VIC	Sale	140.9
VIC	Seymour	137.9
VIC	Shepparton	143.6
VIC	Swan Hill	146.7
VIC	Traralgon	142.2
VIC	Wallan	138.1
VIC	Wangaratta	142.3
VIC	Warrnambool	143.8
VIC	Wodonga	139.1
VIC	Yarrawonga	149.9
WA	Albany	146.8
WA	Boulder	151.7
WA	Bridgetown	144.9
WA	Broome	165.9
WA	Bunbury	137.1
WA	Busselton	141.3
WA	Carnarvon	154.3
WA	Dongara	153.9
WA	Esperance	145.9
WA	Geraldton	149
WA	Kalgoorlie	149.6
WA	Karratha	159.9
WA	Majimup	143.9
WA	Mount Barker	149.2
WA	Perth	138.3
WA	Port Hedland	160.2
WA	Waroona	144.4

Roadkill Arithmetic

26 Replies

Returning for another guest post, James Glover is once again drawn to a beer coaster for some quick, if somewhat morbid, calculations. For those taking to the road over the Christmas period, this post should also serve as a reminder to drive carefully!

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to The Other Side. This twist on the ending to the iconic joke was based on the observation of a single dead chicken on the road while I was returning by car from Sydney to Melbourne at the end of my recent touring holiday. The holiday in fact started two weeks earlier when I was driving around Tasmania. While there were no chickens, there was a dead sperm whale on the road.

In Tasmania I noted that in addition to its abundance of quality food, beer and wines, it has a remarkable supply of one other thing compared to the mainland: native fauna road kill. If you think that the occasional dead kangaroo (or more likely fox) you see driving in the country is plenty, then you haven’t been to Tassie. We are talking a dead possum or wallaby every kilometre or so, which means if you are driving at 100km/hr means you see one every 36 seconds. While it is unfortunate, particularly for the animals involved, to see so many native animals dead (but no foxes because they have been eradicated from the island), it is actually cause for joy because it indicates a very healthy population of native wildlife.

This got me thinking. Could you actually use the number of road kill to estimate the density of animals living in the bush? The answer is yes, and without any derivation or proof I present it here:

density = road kill ratio/kill zone area

where

road kill ratio = av. distance between cars/
                   av. distance between road kill
kill zone area = 2 x car velocity x time x car width

It’s a surprisingly simple formula, and can also be handy for keeping children occupied on long car trips (at least in Tasmania). The model it is derived from is admittedly fairly simplistic – let’s just call it the “Frogger model of vehicle/animal interaction”. Here the time is important because clearly if we had an infinite amount of time and no method of disposal of road kill then the number would build up without limit. In practice the attendant carrion birds on each road kill and its, shall we say, “freshness” (blood, guts, brains you get the picture) suggests that they were all products of the previous nocturnal period’s collisions. In fact there are road signs indicating to drivers to be particularly careful between dusk and dawn to avoid animals so I take “time” to be 10 hours and assumed all carrion are fresh. Taking the average distance between road kill to be 1km and cars to be 10km gives a road kill ratio of 10. The average car speed was 100 km/hr and my car is about 2.5m wide so putting this all together gives an estimated bush density of 20 animals per square km. That’s about one per 5 hectares. That seems a little on the low side for a densely populated area but as “beer coaster” estimates go, it’s probably not a bad start.

This reasoning got me thinking that there probably true that there are no Tasmanian tigers left, because one would have shown up as road kill by now. Tasmanian rangers patrol the roads every morning looking for Tassie devils to monitor the spread of that awful face tumour disease they get. In fact, I saw two Tassie devils on the road and they were both alive and moving. I also saw three live echidnas: three more than I have seen in my life up to now. As mentioned I also saw a dead sperm whale on the road. Not some replica or whale skeleton either: it had died the day before. It was on the beach near Strahan which I was driving on at the time. So, yes, it was on my road and hence I feel justified classifying it as road kill. And no, I don’t know why the whale crossed the road. Perhaps it mis-heard someone say that in Tasmania there was an abundance of “road krill”.

Sculptures by the Sea

Melbourne Cup

2 Replies

I have been resting on my laurels for too long. Two years ago I had Shocking success tipping a winner for the Melbourne Cup. Needless to say the analysis was entirely bogus, but it was fun. Since then I have been reluctant to tarnish my spotless prediction record, but fortune favours the brave, so I really should try again.

Inspired by my last analysis, The Hoopla is tipping Lost in the Moment, which is a 5 year-old bay horse starting at barrier three and is carrying 53 kg. Unfortunately, my statistics tell me that over the last 150 races going back to 1861, there have been five Cups in which a horse with three words in its name has won, but never one with four words. That does not bode well for Lost in the Moment.

I will not give up entirely on a good formula, so based on the analysis from two years ago, I would still like to tip a bay horse with a handicap in the 50-55 kg range starting in the barrier range 1 to 5. This time, however, I will take into account the fact that over half of previous Cup winners only had a one-word name.

Three of the horses in barriers 1 through 5 have a one-word name, and they are all carrying around 53 kg:

Illo
Precedence
Modun

According to this form guide (which is the only one not blocked at my place of work, which limits access to “gambling sites” and yet is doubtless hosting many Melbourne Cup festivities), Precedence and Modun are geldings, which rules them out (they come second to horses in the chart below).

So: the Stubborn Mule tip for the 2011 Melbourne Cup is Illo.

For anyone foolish enough to take heed of this tip, I appreciate it, but you are foolish.

UPDATE: after a good run for much of the race (always a bad sign) Illo failed to win or even place. So it seems that the Mule has lost his crown.

Train in vain

23 Replies

James Glover is a regular contributor to the Stubborn Mule who tries, whenever possible, to incorporate back of the beer coaster calculations in his posts. Here his beer coaster helps him skewer the prospects of high speed rail in Australia.

Don’t get me wrong–I love trains. I have caught trains around Europe and even the train from Sydney to Melbourne just for the pleasure of it. My favourite train journey, from London to Edinburgh up the east coast, was made particularly memorable one trip because I was (a) sitting in First Class (as usual), and (b) sharing a booth with two particularly rotund members of the House of Lords including Lord Lawrence “Mad-Eye” Mooney. So, whatever you do please don’t accuse me of trainist tendencies.

With that in mind, you would think I’d be excited by the release of a government report into building a high-speed train line from Melbourne to Sydney and from Sydney to Brisbane, via Newcastle and the Gold Coast. Sadly however the report recommending construction of this train line contains figures which crush any chance of this actually happening. The estimated cost of the build is $100 billion and there would be an estimated 54 million passengers per year. So how does that work out on a beer coaster? To convert $100 billion to an equivalent annual funding cost we just work out how much the government would pay, perpetually, to borrow this amount. At current government long-term yields of 6.00% this represents an annual interest cost of $6 billion. If the government wanted to pay back the capital in 25 years, a typical benchmark for infrastructure projects, the annual payments would increase to about $8 billion. So, calling it 50 million passengers a year, represents a cost per passenger of $160 per trip. That doesn’t seem so bad given that the cost of a one-way plane ticket between Sydney and Melbourne is about $200-400.

Is this just a coincidence? Sadly, no. It appears the planners have flipped the beer coaster over to its dark rum-soaked side to work out how many passengers they would require to make the project commercially feasible and competitive against air travel. It’s a time honoured trick but one that doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. In the interest of beercoasternomics and because a Google search failed to find the answer, I estimate the daily number of air passengers between Sydney and Melbourne. Turning to webjet.com, I counted 75 flights from Melbourne to Sydney on a Wednesday. From memory a typical plane on that route has about 40 rows and 6 passengers per row or about 250 passengers. That represents a total of fewer than 20,000 passengers per day. Double that for the return journey and add 25% for the numbers travelling to and from Brisbane. Let’s call it 50,000 passengers per day. Over a whole year our generous estimate of airline passenger numbers Sydney-Melbourne-Brisbane is 20 million. I’m guessing it is really no more than 5 million a year but lets call it 20 million anyway. Even at that figure it falls far short of the 50 million required to make the high-speed rail line economically viable. So why have the planners been so brazen in their estimate? That becomes clear if we used a still optimistic but realistic figure, in my opinion, of say 2 million potential rail passengers a year (which is still over 5000 per day), then the average cost of each passenger, one-way, would be $4,000! I rarely approve the use of ~~“dead dog’s dicks”~~ exclamation marks [strikethrough courtesy of a prudish editor], but really!!! Should this line ever get built I will be a frequent and enthusiastic user of it. $150 for $4,000 value is the sort of bargain that would make a late-night shopping channel host blush.

I suspect by including a few commuter stops at the beginning and end of their trips such as Brisbane to Gold Coast and Sydney to Newcastle and maybe even a new commuter line or two, e.g. Sydney to Epping, they have boosted the overall passenger numbers. But then those people are hardly going to pay over $150 for a short trip. The majority of the cost will still be borne by the (maximum) 2 million intercity travellers. Though even including short trip passengers 50 million seems excessively high until you realise it is really just the figure they need to make the numbers work.

So, sadly, the numbers don’t add up. I won’t comment on the politics except to say the feasibility study is one of promises the Labor Party made to get Greens’ support to form a government. Nor will I comment on the claims that there are hidden environmental and economic benefits. High speed rail in Australia is the classic white elephant which, according to Wikipedia, was a gift made by Thai Kings to obnoxious courtiers to bankrupt them due to the high cost of maintenance of these sacred pachyderms. Some will bring up the precedents of Europe or Asia, but there you have either cheap labour and government requisitioned land or a high density of large cities. Australia has none of these.

As The Clash so prophetically sang: it’s a train in vain.

The Chinese growth engine

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As Australia’s economic fortunes continue to surpass the likes of the US, UK and Europe, it is hard to escape a lingering nervousness about what could happen if the mining boom were to collapse. What if the Chinese juggernaut were to falter? Would we be doomed?

Having a conversation exactly like this earlier in the week, I was reminded of a post I wrote more than a year ago which showed surprisingly (to me at least) that exports to China were contributing only 3% to Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP). In yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, economist Ross Gittins tried to bring some perspective to the nervous by pointing out that 80% of Australia’s economic activity is domestic and concluded that:

Take away mining and we wouldn’t be quite as rich as we are, but most of the economy would look much the same as it does. Most of us would still have good, secure, well-paid jobs.

Of course, not everyone is taking such an encouraging line. Over on the Mule Stable, one econo-pessimist drew my attention to this interview with hedge fund manager John Chanos, who has been predicting a bursting of the Chinese economic bubble for some time now. As well as showing a very detailed knowledge of China’s construction industry, Chanos notes that were China’s economy to stall, the US would be much better positioned to cope with it than countries like, say, Australia. That was supposed to be good news for American viewers…not so cheering for those of us on this side of the globe!

All of this suggested that an update of the trade statistics was overdue. The results are as one might expect: the contribution that exports to China make to Australia’s GDP has risen from the 3% I noted in August 2009 to almost 4% as at September 2010.

GDP from Exports to China (Dec-1988 to Sep-2010)

So, while 4% may still be small compared to the 80% of activity that is generated internally in Australia, the real story here is growth, as the steepness of the chart dramatically illustrates. That increase in exports has contributed almost 1% to Australia’s GDP growth for the year! Here is the rolling annual change in the contribution that exports to China make to Australia’s GDP.

Annual Change in GDP from Exports to China (Dec-1988 to Sep-2010)

Not wishing to forget Gittins’ point that we should consider total contributions to the economy, not just exports, it is hard to resist wondering how many of our exports now go to China. The answer is: a lot and growing.

China’s Share of Exports (Dec-1988 to Sep-2010)

So, where does that leave us? Gittins is not wrong, and a collapse in the Chinese economy would not suddenly put everyone in Australia out of work. Nevertheless, it would certainly take a lot of the wind out of our economic sails. Furthermore, given the amount of attention China and the mining industry have in our national consciousness at the moment, it is worth recalling the words of that sage John Maynard Keynes:

Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits – a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.

There is little doubt that if Chanos is right about China, our animal spirits would not take it too well.

Data source: based on Australian Bureau of Statistics (copyright Creative Commons Attribution). Note that all export figures here represent exports of merchandise, so exclude services.

Disappointing the punters

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Some readers will recall last year’s astonishing correct tip for the Melbourne Cup here on the Mule. I was vaguely contemplating an equally spurious analysis this year, but inspiration has eluded me and so I will instead rest on my thoroughly undeserved laurels and preserve my perfect prediction record.