The 3rd Digit

It’s been a while since we’ve discussed my database of TPIR cars, so let’s get back to it.  So far, we’ve discussed the first, second, and fifth digits.  Those are definitely the more interesting digits.  Unfortunately, as might be intuited, the third and fourth digits are more evenly distributed than any of the others, and thus the hardest to guess.  So far, none of the analyses I’ve ran have yielded anything of particular value.

Let’s first look at the basic distribution.  As you can see, it is fairly unremarkable, with the obvious exception of 0, which only appears in the 3rd spot 2% of the time.  Alright.  Semi-interesting.  It may help to know that 2 of the 4 cars in the database that have a 0 in the third digit were Pontiac G6s.  The others were a Chevy Equinox and a Volkwagen GTI.  I’m not sure how useful this is.  Just stay away from 0.

I suppose you could say that 3 is slightly over-represented in the third digit.  This is nice because it’s easy to remember.  3, 3rd digit.  But at 15.5%, that’s only a slight skew.  I have not run significance tests, and at the moment I have no interest in doing so, but I would guess that if that is significant, it’s on the verge of being average.

The same goes for 9, at 7.5%.  Slightly under-represented, yes.  But is it a large enough effect to base a strategy on?  I don’t think so.

I have tried to look at whether or not the second digit can predict the third and so far have come up empty.  Everything seems to be fairly evenly distributed, and the sample sizes are so small in this type of analysis, I’d need 10x as many data points to yield worthwhile results.  In the few instances where the second number does predict the third (for example, a 6 in the 2nd spot is likely to be followed by an 8 in the 3rd), this is mostly due to the fact that certain cars are repeated on the show, occassional with the same exactly price ($16,872 appears multiple times… it is one of the more popular prices for a Ford Focus.)

So, it seems, the third digit is a wash.  Tomorrow (and I promise tomorrow) I’ll bring you the last installment of this series, the 4th digit.  Then, after a short break, I may look into some other possible analyses using this data set.  I’ll also be looking for a way to make the data publically available (anyone have ideas on how to do that?).

I’m a huge geek.  Time to drink.

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