Science Forums 2

[Boerseun]

You've all heard of the hamburger index, right?

Well, here's a new spin on things which I've noticed recently, and I think might be a handy indicator of economic conditions in any given city:

You take a copy of every major newspaper in town, and count the number of pages dedicated to property sales.

Next, you calculate the surface area of all property ads in the paper. Then, you calculate the surface area of all ads containing colour. Full colour ads might count twice the weight of spot colour ads, which has twice the weight of black-and-white ads. If every single ad is full colour, then property sales are as perfect as it could be. If all the ads are black-and-white, then that's as bad as it can get, and the estate agencies are only ticking by, merely placing ads 'cause they have to maintain their presence in the print media. And black-and-white ads are considerably cheaper than colour ads.

Neither a fully-coloured property section nor a fully black-and-white property section is likely, so the balance of colour towards monochromatic might be an indicator saying something meaningful about the economy at the time.

Of course, you shouldn't be a complete doofus and try this with a 100% black-and-white newspaper, aye. You need a paper with colour. Like, duh.

I have a newspaper as a client, and I've noticed the ratio of colour ads towards monochrome change over the last two years as the local economy's fortunes changed. So, if you have a record of these papers over a few years and you compare one day's colour ratio against another, that might tell you whether the economy is good or bad!

I've noticed estate agencies being the first rats to jump ship when the economy goes down, because home sales are normally the first victim of worsening economic conditions - all buyers suddenly disappear. And then they're normally the first guys to go big on advertising spending when there's a turnaround, because when there's more money going around, suddenly the buyers pop out of the woodwork to snap up whatever bargains are left before the house prices rise again - and the estate agencies follow suit with bigger, flashier and more colourful ads!

So, boys 'n girls, remember - you heard it here first! Go grab a newspaper and calculate away. Then monitor it and keep track of it, and the day you start seeing a higher colour percentage, you go out and buy stocks and shares and gizmos an' shit!

And then take your profits and go buy yourself a beer and think of how awesome Boerseun is.