Re: Walmart sales & gas prices

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

right. I don't say that my explanation is the Truth. But I'll assume
that's it's "true enough" until I hear another plausible explanation.
Both explanations -- or all five etc. -- might be "true enough."

(one explanation that complements the other is that WalMart sales are
an okay measure of US economic activity in general these days.)

At least for me, "true enough" has means "true enough to act on" in
some way. In the case of this hypothesis, the "fact" is so trivial
that it doesn't really matter.

On 8/26/05, Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Michael Perelman wrote:
> >
> > Jim is correct, but I did not think that gas prices would have that much of an
> > effect.
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 26, 2005 at 07:59:32PM -0700, Jim Devine wrote:
> > > Walmart traditionally has had its stores outside of the center of
> > > town. Thus one had to drive to its stores, something encouraged by low
> > > gas prices. But what if Walmart changes its strategy, building in
> > > places like (say) Oakland, CA?
> > >
> > > On 8/26/05, Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > This chart shows what appears to be a pretty solid relationship over the last 10
> > > > years.
> 
> There are millions of quite unrelated things that would show correlation
> on a graph. I do not use the word "millions" figuratively, and I'm
> probably underestimating the number of correlations which indicate
> nothing. In fact I think Gould once showed there was a correlation
> between gas prices and some astronomical event.
> 
> Carrol
> 


-- 
Jim Devine
"An economic forecaster is like a cross-eyed javelin thrower: they
don't win many accuracy contests, but they keep the crowd's
attention." -- Anonymous