NZ and US petrol ('gasoline') and diesel prices
A chart of petrol ('gasoline') prices in the USA and New Zealand since 2004 to now. Petrol is more expensive in New Zealand than the USA—around US$7 per gallon in fact.
free range statistics
I write about applications of data and analytical techniques like statistical modelling and simulation to real-world situations. I show how to access and use data, and provide examples of analytical products and the code that produced them.
Latest posts
US oil stocks
Code for an updateable chart of crude oil stocks for the USA as a whole; and a pointer to a new page I'm maintaining of up-to-date monitoring of the fuel crisis.
Crude oil stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma
Code for an updateable chart of crude oil stocks at the importing Cushing facility in the USA.
Long term economic growth rates
I draw some charts of GDP per capita growth from 1900 to 2023, for various countries, using data from the excellent Maddison Project in economic history at the Groningen Growth and Development Centre.
United Kingdom prime ministers
UK has had a spurt of prime ministerial turnover in the past decade or so, but it's by no means unprecedented. I download data from Wikipedia and try several ways to visualise that turnover.
Seasonal adjustment
Seasonal adjustment is easy but getting hold of data can be hard. In this case I wrangle Samoa's monthly visitor arrivals data from 2017 to present and then use the seas and fable R packages to seasonally adjust it and ask if there is an impact from Iran war fuel crisis (there isn't evidence of one yet).
Durations of wars
Modern wars on average last longer than a year, but the distribution is very right-skewed. Conditional on a war lasting 74 days and with no information available other than past durations, the median total duration is 261 days, and an 80% prediction interval would be (95, 1,752) days.
Pacific island energy supply
Pacific island countries are heavily dependent on imported diesel, gas and kerosene for electricity generation and for cooking.
Pacific island demograpy, the narrative
Pacific island populations are shaped by people movements , more than is the case for most countries in the world. Ease of migration—because of history, culture or international agreements—has a critical impact on population size, growth and shape; and the fundamentals of the economy.
Pacific island remittances
Pacific island countries have some of the highest dependencies in the world on remittance payments from overseas.