A gift scenario (contains more maths)

More thinking out loud. You'll be quoting this one day, I guarantee you! ;-)

My post yesterday suggesting a formula for the value of gifts may have bored you silly so I thought I'd post an example of it in action.

Let's imagine a man gives a necklace to his girlfriend. The necklace is worth £500 but he only paid £50. To him it has little use (except perhaps that it keeps her sweet) while to her it has a symbolic use as a way of showing off to her friends that she has someone special. So to start with let's say that practically speaking it has a value of zero.
He earns £2000 per month while she earns £1300.
Importantly, while she is faithful to him, he is seeinbg at least two other women on the side.
This gives us the following values (note that I've amended my formula to take into account the fact that the man only paid £50, but to the woman it is 'worth' £500:

rv(G) = the value of the relationship for the giver = 6 (I'm being kind to the two-timing b**tard)
nrv(G) = the number of people with the same or higher relationship value for the giver = 3
fv(G) = financial value = £50
mi(G) = monthly income of the giver = £2000
pv = 0

This gives a gift value from the giver's point of view of:
gv(G) = ((rv(G) x fv(G))/(nrv(G) x mi(G)))/pv + 1
= ((6 x 50)/(3 x 2000))/(0+1)
= (300/6000)/1
= 0.05

From the woman's perspective the gift value is
gv(R) = ((rv(R) x fv(R))/(nrv(R) x mi(R)))/pv + 1
= ((2 x 500))/(1 x 1300))/(0+1)
= (1000/1300)/1
= 0.77

For the sake of convenience let's mutliply the gv(G) and gv(R) results by 100 (giving 5 and 77 respectively). Because final gift value = gv(R) - gv(G) we have a final gift value of 72 on the 'Gifter Scale'.

Because this is positive, I suggest, the gift has a positive effect on the relationship.

Is this a good score? I don't know - my theory only suggests that so long as the score is positive the gift will be 'positive' - maybe it's possible to work out a few scenarios to come up with a scale on which gifts can be measured. But the fact that there's such a big gap between the gft values for giver and receiver could be seen as an indication that the giver is in fact investing little in the relationship, both financially and emotionally.
So to amend my theory somewhat let me suggest that GV should ideally be zero (in other words the value of the gift should be the same for both parties) and the further away from zero it is, the less valuable the gift is as a gift. Whether it is positive or negative hints at the inequality in the relationship, perhaps. (If not, then to get rid of the negative we could square both sides of the equation and get the square root of the result).

There is a case, incidentally, for inputting two different values for practicality based on the fact that the giver here is only receiving a relationship that appears is meaningless and easily replaced ( so give it 0), while the receiver is getting a symbol that can be exchanged for social capital (which is essential to life according to Baudrillard's system of objects, so give it 6). If you put these figures in as pv(G) and pv(R) the end result changes dramatically.

The economy of gifts: a mathematical solution?

I noticed the other day that someone had linked to my post from January about the value of gifts and it spurred me to do something I've been meaning to do for some time.
It's a bit of a tradition in academia for someone, generally with sponsorship, to come up with a formula for something. Last year I think someone came up with a formula that calculated the most depressing day of the year. I can't remember who sponsored it, but it resurfaced recently to calculate the happiest day of the year.
Anyway, it always gets reported in the press because they're suckers for things like that.
So here's my entry: a calculation for the value of a gift.

You may remember in my original post I stated something like 'the value of a gift is inversely proportional to its use value'. This, then, becomes the economy of gifts. A simple but utterly useless token becomes more invested with meaning than, say, a washing machine. (A few weeks ago I sold a freezer to a guy who told me he was buying it for his wife as it was their wedding anniversary. More expensive, but less meaningful than a bunch of flowers. Indeed, quite possibly a 'negative' gift? More on this in a moment).

While walking back from my grocery shopping the other day I was trying to shape out how an equation would look for gifts.



(Any of these three is okay. For '1' any constant will do, and sometimes the formula is written as y = c/x where c is a constant. This point becomes important later on!)
I also thought that financial value had to be a factor in there somewhere so believed the formula would be something along the lines of gift value = 1/(financial value x use value)

Well that's okay, but how do you work out what the use value is? And what about other factors? Maybe, I thought to myself, this is more complicated than it looks!

(You can skip the next stuff if you're not mathematically inclined. The actual formula is at the end of the post)

Here's my original hypothesis: "The value of a gift is inversely proportional to the use to which it is put".

On further consideration it also seems likely that factors to be included in this equation are:

• How close the giver is to the receiver (with husband/wife being 10 and casual acquaintance being 1)


• The number of people who are as close or closer to the giver (the idea being that the more people who are as close or closer then the less the gift means)


• The cost of the item as a proportion of the income of the giver (ignoring any nonsense about not approving of excessive exenditure - let's face it, the more someone spends the better it goes down; but it has to be proportional as someone who's rich can't get away with spending the same amount as someone who's poor)

So those factors would allow us to work out the gift value.

But it also seems reasonable that there is a difference between the value as seen from the perspective of the giver, and from the receiver. So a second gift value for the receiver, gv(G) could be calculated using:

• How close the receiver is to the giver


• How many other people are as close or closer to the receiver


• The cost of the gift as a proportion of the receiver's income

Practicality, incidentally, is rated from 0 to 10. Because you cannot divide by zero, all practicality values must have 1 added to them so that the scale becomes effectively 1 to 11.

These two figures, gv(G) and gv(R) could then be used to work out a gift rating whereby the gift value for the giver is subtracted from the gift value for the receiver. If a postive score is achieved, the gift can be deemed a success.

So: gv(G) = gift value (for the giver) = ((relationship value/number of people with same relationship value or higher for giver ) x (cost of item/monthly income of giver))/practicality + 1

and: gv(R) = gift value (receiver) = ((relationship value/number of people with same relationship value or higher for receiver) x (cost of item/monthly income of receiver))/practicality + 1

Or to put it another way:

gv(G) = ((rv(G) x fv)/(nrv(G) x mi(G)))/pv + 1

gv(R) = ((rv(R) x fv)/(nrv(R) x mi(R)))/pv + 1

Givers should aim for a positive value on the 'Gifter Scale' where

GV = gv(R) - gv(G)

or:

To summarise what those symbols mean:

• GV = Final gift value


• rv(G) and rv(R) = the closeness of the giver to the receiver and vice versa. The higher the number the closeer they are - it doesn't matte what scale you use so long as both sides of the equation use the same one. But 0 = stranger and 10 = husband/wife/life partner seems reasonable


• nrv(G) and nrv(R) = the number of people with the same or a closer relationship to the giver/receiver


• fv = the financial value of the gift (there is of course an argument to be made about the role of 'bargains' or 'investments' here - if I spend one pound on a gift that is really worth ten times that should it go in my favour or against?!)


• mi(G) and mi(R) = monthly incomes of the giver/receiver


• pv = practicality or use value on a scale of, say, 0 to 10 with 0 being completely useless (souvenirs are included here) and 10 being essential for continued existence (e.g. a kidney)

This isn't quite the same as my original hypothesis as, although practicality value is still the important factor, the figure above the line is not a constant (which is what defines inverse proportion.
But maths aside, the lesson to be learnt from this is that the giver should always aim to spend a greater proportion of the receiver's income than their own or to buy a 'useless' gift (i.e. a 'token'). The latter piece of advice is particularly relevant in cases where the giver earns less than the receiver.

Anyway, there's my theory - anyone care to plug in some figures and see how it pans out? I'm sure the equation can be simplified a lot more (help appreciated!)

[Update - I think this is a workable simplification! My head's spinning...]

which further simplifies (I think!) to:

Which is remarkably similar to my original idea that gift value = 1/(financial value x use value)...

Okay, so a little bit of nonsense, right? Well, no... the point of the exercise was not to come up with a fancy-looking formula but to explore what it is that makes up a gift and its perceived value. For me, after a little thought, the value is amplified by the closeness of the giver to the receiver but diminished if that closeness is not exclusive. The financial value is irrelevant but the financial investment, as a proportion of the giver's income is. The 'inversely proportional to the use value, or practicality value' thing is still entirely arbitrary and I haven't even come close to proving that one way or the other.

Finished

It seems so irrelevant now but I finished my book today and emailed it to the publisher. Just captions to do and a few inevitable corrections. Due out in November - Amazon link soon.

UPDATE: I've added Amazon links to the menu bar on the right. Although the UK site is listing Visual Communication, it hasn't filtered through to the US site yet, but it will...

Underground

This photo by Alexander Chadwick shows people being evacuated from the London Underground after today's bomb blasts.

Click to load the full size version (640x480)

Jet (ooh ooh ooh ooh woo-woo woo woo)

I had the pleasure of experiencing London's Gatwick airport today/yesterday/whatever.
I was meeting a friend whose plane was due in just after midnight, so I got the 22.34 train to the airport to be sure I arrived nice and early. Before I left I used Dashboard's flight tracker widget to see how her flight was doing - 1 minute late it said, so I guessed all would be well and we'd make the 01.45 train back home.

I'm not particularly au fait with airports, having only folown once (or twice if you count the return trip) and I always expected them to be extremely ordered affairs with lots of instructions everywhere. Instead they seem to be big cavernous spaces with lots of people milling around. When I went to Heathrow for a flight to Ireland a while back I bumped into David Trimble, First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, looking distinctly harrassed. I remember thinking at the time how odd it can be to bump into 'famous' or 'important' people. (Actually I remember thinking 'who's he? It's on the tip of my toungue...'

So anyway there I was at Gatwick wandering through the entrance and looking around for a little bit of a hint about where I should be going. Nothing. It is an appalingly designed place (as is Heathrow's terminal 1) and I can't imagine what effect it has on visitors to the country. But at 23.13 it was a soul-less place.
Eventually I found a sign that said 'Arrivals' so I thought I'd best follow it. After passing by empty and depressing check-in desks I found the 'UK arrivals' lounge. I say 'lounge' - it was a door with a broken hinge and some green chairs that looked far too uncomfortable to sit on, never mind sleep as many people appeared to be doing.
This didn't exactly strike me as particularly international so it came as no surprise when I realised that 'UK arrivals' didn't refer to people arriving in the UK but people arriving on internal flights - when I thought about it the logic was obvious: everyone is arriving in the UK.

I couldn't believe how stupid I was, and I was grateful I arrived early as if I'd spent all my time in the wrong lounge with my friend stranded where I was supposed to be, I'd have felt a right proper charley.
So I carried on walking until I came to 'International Arrivals' only to find that the plane I was waiting for was delayed by over an hour.
So I went up to the bookshop and bought a copy of Graham Greene's 'Brighton Rock', a book I've been meaning to read for ages. Then I went to get a coffee but was stuck next to a group of people whose entire vocabulary consisted of the f- and c-words on one side, and three rather attractive young women with equally attractive Irish accents on the other.

It was, to cut a long story short, one hell of an evening. The plane eventually arrived at 01.15, exactly half an hour before the last train home and, coincidentally, exactly half an hour before the passengers actually made it to the lounge. Hence after the required (and heartfelt) emotional greeting my friend and I spent several hours drinking coffee and catching up before catching the 04.44 train home.
We eventually arrived back here at half five in the morning. She's gone to bed despite having gone through 'tired' and I can hear her deep breathing as I type in the next room (oh - now it's snoring). I, on the other hand, reasoned that if I went to bed I'd get at most two hours sleep before having to get up - so decided to stay up and go to work early, hopefully coming home early before my all-nighter catches up with me. Funny, all I did was go to the airport but I'm going to be the one that ends up with jet-lag!
This may be a mistake - it's now twenty past six in the morning and I can feel the side effects already. Maybe if I close my eyes for just a minute...

What do you mean, you've never heard the Eroica symphony?

The BBC begins its marathon Beethoven broadcast tomorrow - every note he ever wrote played over a whole week.
I'm going to dip in every now and then; I got into classical music through Beethoven and while I sometimes grow tired of his style I quite enjoy having a long break and then 'rediscovering' him.

If you've never heard the nine symphonies then the BBC is going to be making the broadcasts available for download over the next few days, so here's you chance. (Of course you can hear the whole week on the internet via the Beeb's great 'listen again' service).

If you're new to this stuff and fancy giving it a go, I recommend the 3rd ('Eroica'), 5th, 7th and 9th symphonies in particular (the 6th is always popular too - lots of familiar tunes you can hum along to)

The third symphony's first two movements are powerful; the second is a long slow funeral march with a magnificent double fugue in the middle that I used to bore my neighbours by playing over and over again.

The fifth is of course the 'de de de DUM' symphony - well worth listening to the whole thing because it repays close attention and ends in a glorious blaze of colour.
The dot-dot-dot-dash pattern of the symphony's motif (which recurs throughout) is Morse Code for 'V' (although Beethoven didn't know that, of course!) As a result, the symphony became popular during the second world war (V for Victory, you see) and the motif was used to open BBC broadcasts to Europe, in particular those that contained codes for resistance fighters.

The seventh symphony was the one that 'got' me, in particular the second movement which, on the recording I first heard, was played extremely slowly. Very, very sexy music. Nowadays it's more common that it's played quickly and it can often lose its punch. (Again, a lot like sex...)

The ninth symphony needs no introduction... but what the hell. The first movement is some of the most dramatic music you will ever hear - until the final movement which includes a full choir singing Schiller's 'Ode To Joy' to one of the most famous tunes ever written, so simple but so stirring. It's a great symphony to hear live if you ever get the chance.
Beethoven was stone deaf by the time he wrote this piece, not long before he died, and at the first performance he had to be physically turned around to see the ecstatic reception it received. The moment's captured quite well in the film 'Immortal Beloved' (although the film itself is sometimes a little self-indulgent).

Compared with Mozart's 40-odd symphonies and Haydn's 100+, Beethoven's nine symphonies are few in number but enormous in impact. He took the symphony and transformed it from something of a bagatelle showcase into a powerful expression of emotion and musical form. It had a huge impact on music - and not always a good one. Brahms famously put off writing a symphony because he didn't feel able to meet the challenge (in the end he wrote four, and his first symphony was labelled 'Beethoven's tenth' by many critics). The other oddity of the nine symphonies is that the number became a bit of a curse. Schubert only wrote nine before he died (in his 30s) and so did Bruckner. So convinced was he that he would die after writing his ninth symphony that Mahler put off producing one, calling what is in effect his ninth symphony an orchestral song-cycle ('Das Lied Von Der Erde' or 'Song of the Earth'). Thinking he'd beaten the curse he wrote what became his 'ninth' symphony - and promptly died...

Incidentally, the Eroica symphony is famous for quite often being misprinted in newspapers as 'Erotica'. I suspect either an over-zealous spell-checker or, more likely, a proofreader's industry in-joke.

Experimental Travel

From Michael Quinion's ever-fascinating World Wide Words newsletter:

Experimental Travel
The phrase is in the news because Lonely Planet yesterday published
its Guide to Experimental Travel. One author is Joel Henry, a 48-
year-old television scriptwriter from Strasbourg who is said to
have created the idea in 1990 (though the term is more recent).
It's also called "experimental tourism". As a surreal alternative
to the standard trudge round tourist venues, he suggests that you
should "challenge your perceptions of a city and increase your
receptiveness as a tourist" by trying alternative ways of seeing.
Alphatourism, for example: identify the first and last streets in
the A-Z, draw a line between the two and follow the route on foot
(a variation might be to draw a random shape, superimpose it on a
street plan and follow the route it marks out). Or aerotourism:
spend a day in an airport enjoying its facilities without going
anywhere. Or nyctalotourism: go to a foreign city at twilight, look
around all night and leave just before dawn. Or cecitourism: let a
trusted friend or partner walk you blindfolded round a place,
describing the sights. If all these are too mundane, you might try
"horse's head tourism": don a horse's head costume and walk around
to experience the way that people react to you.

* From the Independent, 9 Feb. 2005: About 20 miles further on, I
drive past Bodiam Castle, a 14th-century fortification. This, of
course, is a conventional tourist attraction, but experimental
tourists are permitted to visit such places, as long as they
indulge in contretourism. This involves turning your back on the
monument in question and taking a photograph of the view in the
opposite direction.

* From the Observer, 22 May 2005: "You see," he says. "That is the
thing about doing experimental tourism, it gives you a special
feeling. It makes you into a person you are not." I think about
this but I don't think I'm sure enough of the person I am to know
that I'm not the person I'm not. But then, this is precisely the
kind of topsy-turvy conundrum that experimental tourism throws up
the whole time.

Skype

I just had a 20 minute telephone conversation with a friend in Spain via Skype on my Powerbook using a headset with microphone.
Excellent quality sound - apparently I sounded a bit odd on the other end but more than acceptable.
Total cost for the call... only 20p (36 US cents/ 0.30 Euros)

Not bad - higly recommended if you've never tried it.