Science!

It's a week of firsts here at The Cycle. In our first first from the previous post, I had to rescind a recommendation. And now, for our second first, I have to issue a correction. It seems that our Chief Unpaid Engineering Consultant, the legendary Sir Steve of the Greater Peoria Metropolitan Area (you may remember him from such posts as Steve K Provides Some Enlightenment) did a bit of peer review on my cost versus value equation and submitted the following corrected graph on behalf of his cat:

So now we have all of our values greater than zero, which is swell, though by swapping the cost and function axes from my original orientation, the quadrant numbering gets all wonky. So I will stand on the shoulders of giants (not really, Steve's about my height, but it's a metaphor, people), find another random notepad, and propose the following:

I'm going back to my original orientation, but I'm throwing out the whole "quadrant" idea and proposing instead a curve that represents the "typical" cost/function of bike stuff. As you pay more, the function goes up... to a point (beyond that, you're just paying more to impress the other dentists on your group ride). So the key (to me) is finding those outlier data points on the left side of the graph, dots above the curve, parts that work way better than those costing the same or more... like those $15 V-brakes I mentioned when I introduced the concept.

It's an insanely simple idea, one which certainly doesn't need multiple graphs, a lot of babbling, and an engineering consultation. But hey, it's cold outside, I may be nursing a non-bike-related hamstring strain, and cabin fever is just starting to rear its ugly head.

(Special thanks to Steve and his cat for providing some actual mathy-graphy know-how to this otherwise word-focused endeavor.)