James Henstridge

Petrol stations in Perth follow an easy to understand price fixing cycle.

Each Wednesday, all the petrol stations independently decide that fuel should be expensive. The price then decays over the week until it hits its lowest point on Tuesday, after which the cycle repeats.

This has worked as reliably as clockwork, right up until the recent Iran war. It will be interesting to see whether the old cycle picks up again once things settle down.

The graph comes from the WA Government Fuel Watch website: https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/retail/price-trends

Mar 10 at 2:37amWeb
Show threadFederico Mena QuinteroMar 10
@jamesh I saw the chart before reading your text, and thought, no, no way this is talking about floating point ULPs.
Show threadloomhighMar 10
@jamesh really hoping it's cheap field day today
Show threadSu_GMar 10
@jamesh
A pretty clear pattern - until the ‘end of days’ stated. 😐
#petrolPricing
Show threadEric IrelandMar 10
@jamesh It's time to start stockpiling toilet paper 🧻
Show threadrichMar 10
@jamesh this chart not having plot points for each day, regardless of x-axis labelling constraints, makes me sad
Show threadJames HenstridgeMar 10

@rich That seems to be a limitation (or configuration mistake?) of the chart library they've used on the website.

You can download the raw data in CSV format if you want to build your own charts though.