Re:What the U.S. needs is an 18-cent coin
by bunderbunder on Thursday May 17, 2012 @12:04PM
(#3987584)
It should be small transactions because cash is being used less and less often for medium-to-large transactions.
It's not safe to assume that all cent values from 0 to 99 are equally likely because of the fact that cash transactions tend to be small. The number of items being purchased will also tend to be small. So the fact that most prices for individual items tend to end in 99, 95 or some other multiple of five cents should have a huge impact on the distributions in real life, especially for transactions to which sales tax does not apply.
For example in Oregon, a state with no sales tax, the fewest number of items you'd be able to buy at $0.99 or $0.95 to get a $x.32 total is at least 20. (That's a whole lot of "fun size" bags of potato chips.) The total would come out to $19.32, at which point a lot of people would just pay with plastic, anyway. Perhaps most people would.
It's not safe to assume that all cent values from 0 to 99 are equally likely because of the fact that cash transactions tend to be small. The number of items being purchased will also tend to be small. So the fact that most prices for individual items tend to end in 99, 95 or some other multiple of five cents should have a huge impact on the distributions in real life, especially for transactions to which sales tax does not apply.
For example in Oregon, a state with no sales tax, the fewest number of items you'd be able to buy at $0.99 or $0.95 to get a $x.32 total is at least 20. (That's a whole lot of "fun size" bags of potato chips.) The total would come out to $19.32, at which point a lot of people would just pay with plastic, anyway. Perhaps most people would.