If you can stand one more bit of gasoline trivia, a better measure
probably would be km/g or some other function of distance and mass
rather than distance and volume, because gasoline is less dense at
higher temperatures. (But it probably does not save you any money to
fill up at night rather than during the day.)
"California drivers were overcharged $376.4 million on gasoline in
one year because fuel pumps don't adjust for changing temperatures,
according to a state study."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/04/MNQ514GV7I.DTL
David
At 4:27 PM +0000 2/2/09, Nick Cox wrote:
I think in Britain, which naturally I consider part of Europe, it is
still common to talk of mileage (and not just because of the uneven and
snail-like progress of metrication here). The fact that you should
regress on gpm := 1/mpg for all sorts of good reasons -- which I have
often enjoyed demonstrating -- does not affect the fact that drivers
care about how far they can go before they need to refill with fuel, so
to that extent mpg is a natural unit too.
Nick
[email protected]
Kit Baum
It is an Americanism to say 'your mileage may vary', as a European
would more sensibly* talk about litres/kilometre than miles/gallon.
But there it is.
* It is readily seen that the relationship between price and mpg is
not nearly as linear (and the linear fit not nearly as good) as that
between price and 1/mpg.
*
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--
David Radwin // [email protected]
Office of Student Research and Campus Surveys, University of
California, Berkeley
*
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