Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 December 4

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December 4

Store stock inventory

How do stores generally stock products? Do they order based on the expected demand or do they order less or more? Does it depend on the type of product like whether its food or a tv? And why is it that at launch,when popular products sell out, the amount of time taken to restock varies. For example, I've noticed Apple restocks quite quickly after a launch, a few weeks at most. But in comparison, games console launches such as PS4 and Xbox One are expected to be out of stock until 2014. How do these processes work? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clover345 (talk • contribs) 00:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Supply chain management might be a good place to start. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:08, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The specific problem with videogame consoles is a subtle one. Most game consoles are sold at a loss. They literally cost more to make than their retail price. The manufacturers make their money by selling the license to write or sell games for the console - which indirectly results in more costly games. Parents frequently don't spot this trick and buy their kids the cheap, shiney new game consoles for Xmas - only to discover that games are now $70 instead of the $20 they could really sell for.

Open for the rest of this reply that is somewhat off topic

This leads the manufacturers into an interesting little chicken-and-egg situation. In order to sell any consoles at all on day #1, the console manufacturer has to have a reasonable number of games that run well on it. But in order for the games companies to invest years writing games specifically for it without knowing in advance how popular the console will turn out to be, they have to have some assurance that enough machines will sell in the first few days for them to turn a profit on their games. This pushes the manufacturer to make more consoles for day #1. The game manufacturers who sign up for day #1 releases are taking a risk because they don't know how well the consoles will sell - but they have the promise of having a large share of the market for games for that console because there aren't that many titles out there at the outset. Hence they push for exclusivity - they want their 1st person zombie shooter to be the ONLY 1st person zombie shooter in the stores over Xmas. However, there is a cash-flow issue. If a console manufacturer sells a LOT of consoles but there aren't many games selling to bringing in the license revenue - then they're deeply in the hole. This pushes them to make consoles in smaller batches, gradually ramping up the numbers as their income from games sales goes up. So one side are pushing for more console sales and fewer games, while the other wants fewer console sales and more games. Who actually wins this tussle is horribly complicated. Worse still, there are economies of scale and technology advances to consider. As the console gets older, sales volume increases and the underlying technology gets easier to make, the cost to manufacture them goes down. This allows the manufacturer to start making a profit on the console itself. Hence, selling consoles a year or two after the initial launch is VASTLY more profitable (well, it actually *is* profitable - as opposed to loss-making - so it's infinitely more profitable!!). So you really want to keep a pent-up demand for the machine that will be satisfied later, when the machines can be sold for a profit rather than saturating the market at the outset when you're basically losing money. So there is a continual tension between convincing software companies to write games by selling lots of consoles - and avoiding the wrath of your finance office by selling too many of them. The result is a delicate dance with results that vary from company to company. Nintendo have a reputation for making cheaper, simpler consoles - and they often do make a small profit on each one they sell - which means that they typically don't run out of them after massive lines of people rush out to buy them. Microsoft have deep pockets - but not infinitely deep. Sony are in a much tighter financial position - so they start out more slowly. When Nintendo and Sony were fighting the battle for hand-held games, Nintendo were making their machines for a profit and a typical Nintendo owner bought 12 games. Sony were making a loss on every one they sold - and their customers bought (on average) 2.5 games. This caused Sony lots of pain...they actually didn't want to sell more consoles! With Apple, it's a different matter. Their mobile machines (iPhone, iPad) are tied up with complicated telecommunications deals - and they sell almost everything through their own storefront. Also, people buy phones in order to get the sexxier look, the lighter weight, the sharper screen with the curved corners...and the longer battery life - they are more like jewellery for some people. They aren't tied into a particular set of software applications. On launch day, iPhone(N) customers are mostly going to be buying software that was written for the iPhone(N-1) - so the whole tie-in with software developers doesn't happen. The whole way that these devices are sold is not at all simple. Hardly anything like that is now sold for what-it-cost-to-make plus profit-margin...it's all tied into services and software and media purchases and networking arrangements. Even things like printers are often sold at a loss with the profit being made through subsequent ink cartridge sales. It's only a matter of time until we have cars that are sold for $1000 that have square filler caps and only run on "special" $10/gallon gasoline.  :-)

SteveBaker (talk) 02:45, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Ok, this is actually an excellent question and one I feel has an answer that may be helpful to the OP. In the retail industry not all retailers are equal, however with the advent of Wal-Mart the inventory control systems are beginning to change drastically. What was once mostly a "pull system", where orders for inventory are filled by customer order and keep excess to a minimum, is changing to a "push system" where an attempt to guess at customer demand is made. Of course there is the "Push-Pull system" which attempts to do both and something I was actually unaware of. I have to wonder if that actually works, but the debate on the whole system of "push" has been criticized for having some rather bad consequences on manufacturers. See this source for more details on inventory control.--Mark Miller (talk) 08:58, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Also, on the issue of out of stock game consuls and games, that is actually a manufacturer issue where the expected demand is not or cannot always be determined. Therefore when a launch runs out and you see that stock remain empty for several months...it may not always be a matter of bad inventory control, but the manufacturer only supplying a limited quantity until they determine if demand is greater or as expected. It is not always a matter of the retailer being able to order, but the manufacturer not able (or sometimes willing) to supply the product in a timely manner. Sometime that is by mistake and sometimes by design.--Mark Miller (talk) 09:10, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

And they may intentionally create a scarcity of the game console to make them seem more valuable, and keep the price artificially high. This is the same trick used by De Beers to keep diamond prices artificially high. StuRat (talk) 09:54, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, they "may" do that, may they? If you have a reference for such a claim, please provide it. Otherwise, please refrain from posting such unwarranted speculation. --Viennese Waltz 11:00, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Console makers are engaged in monopolistic competition, and the Monopolistic_competition notes they have limited market power (meaning the power to price their product above marginal cost). This can only be achieved by limiting demand. I haven't seen any studies on whether this actually results in increased revenue. OldTimeNESter (talk) 17:25, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

It's worth remembering the PS4 was only released in November 15, the Xbox one a week later. Out of stock (actually limited stock) until 2014 may only mean for 5-7 weeks. The iPad mini retina which was released November 12 is similarly in short supply and one would think and sources seem to confirm this may remain the case until next year. [1]

If you read discussion surrounding the iPad mini retina shortages or really many such shortages, another factor which is frequently mentioned are component supply issues. There will obviously depend on the product. (To give an example, the SOC for the Xbox and PS4 are AMD. I like AMD but they no longer have their own fabs and it's fair to say are doing a lot less better than Apple or any of the SOC suppliers Apple has used in the recently and unsurpisingly this has often been reflected in their relationships with theo fabs. So their ability to meet the demands would likely be lower. The SOC is also more complex/costly than those in Apple's mobile product lines. IIRC the PS3 also had problems initally allegely due to supply problems with the blue lasers needed on ther BluRay drives.)

Also consider that overall and despite the lower level of miniaturisation, the PS4 and Xbox One are relatively high cost and I expect high complexity (i.e. more difficult to manufacture/take longer), products compared to most of the Apples products. (Don't go by sale price, as SB has said this is misleading. Despite costing $700 or whatever, the iPhone 5s is estimated to cost about $200 to make as with most iPhones I've ever seen [2]. The Xbox One and PS4 are sold at something close to cost [3] [4].)

There may also be timing issues. All these products are clearly intended to be available before the Christmas season. When did the design of the consoles finalise and them enter production versus the Apple products [5]? You may think since the consoles will last several years and the Apple products will be replaced next year, Apple can less afford to finalise their products too soon but actually it's more likely the reverse since going with something wrong in some way could easily mean the console makers are stuck with a crappy console for the next few years but mobile devices don't actually aim to be cutting edge since if anything, Apple has shown specs aren't the end all.

Compared with consoles, there are already many people predicting the Xbox is screwed because of it's relatively worse specs/performance and their concentration on the the general living room box market rather than games [6] [7]. And while these predictions may or may not be wrong, Nintendo has shown with the Wii U that winning the segment of less dedicated gamers or with unique features is no guarantee of continued success. Of course in the modern tablet and smart phone arena, as with the continued predictions of the demise of the PC and laptop, there's continued prediction of the demise of the console so Microsoft's belief of at a minimum, fundamental shift away from the traditional idea of a console isn't that surprising.

With consoles, there's also far greater involvement of third party software developers in designing the console, particularly this time around or at least for the PS4 [8] [9]. And the actual design period for the consoles is quite a lot longer. (For clarity while the major specs of the console are finalised a while before launch since developers need to have something to work with if they want to launch their games with the consoles, there may stll be minor changes [10].)

All this means that getting the timing right, meaning finalising the console so you can put it in to production and have sufficient volumes for the holiday sales period is likely more difficult.

There are also the volume differences, the PS3 sold 80 million or so so far [11]. Apple can probably sell that many iPhones in a single year and launching later has sold probably 400 million iPhones by now [12].

Apple of course is a highly focused device manufacturer fairly well known for their integration, control and management of their supply chain and manufacturers/OEM [13], Microsoft still only has limited involvement in the device/hardware market with the console probably being their most important device and Sony is fairly diverse.

Remember also while Apple has a new product every year with the corresponding high demand (so their may be a relative lull but it's only a few months), the consoles have their release with the corresponding high demand followed by a several years long tapering period. So console manufacturers will need to start off with high production volumes, reducing over time, but it most likely would be difficult and wouldn't make sense to try and fully meet that initial high demand by trying for too high production volumes. (It would also be interesting to see graphs comparing sales over time. I wouldn't be surprised of the peak for consoles was steeper.)

Nil Einne (talk) 14:11, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Princeton Christian School

Addressed on editor's talk page to suggest the best route
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Hello, I'm new to Wikipedia and don't really know how to use it or create a page. I work at Princeton Christian School in Princeton, FL. I would truly appreciate if a volunteer could help set up the page for the school. You can find all the information on the website at www.princetonchristian.org. We are the Panthers and the school was founded in 1957. Please help, the exposure is greatly needed. Thank you!!!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pcode16 (talk • contribs) 05:10, 4 December 2013 (UTC) You already posted this request. See the above responses. Please stop reposting it. Shadowjams (talk) 06:48, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Mount Everest

I seem to be unable to find information on the size of the area of Mount Everest. I already know the height and I know the area of the Sagarmatha National Park, but what is the area of the mountain? Thuresson (talk) 08:39, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

How does one define the area of a mountain? HiLo48 (talk) 09:59, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

That's not a value normally given for a mountain. First off, it could mean the area of the top of the mountain, or the base, where it meets the ground. Then the point where the mountain starts is itself difficult to determine. Then you get into the fractal problem, similar to the one described in How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension. Then, finally, you would find the area of the top of the mountain would change with the seasons, as glaciers grow and snow pack accumulates in winter. 10:02, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it isn't so much a fractal problem, because the fractal problem is with length and not area. Even if the outline of a shape (like the coastline of Britain) is undefinable because of fractal issues, it's area is definable within the limits. Consider the Koch snowflake, a figure with an infinitely long (and fractally derived) outline, but a finite area. --Jayron32 15:26, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The problems one runs into when measuring 2D area (*embedded in 3D*) are the same as when measuring length embedded in 2D. Although there must exist more convention because people need to know how much land they own. And I guess you were thinking in terms of a cross section rather than area along the slant of the hill. It's not clear what OP meant. --81.175.225.92 (talk) 18:24, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Ah yes. Of course. --Jayron32 19:22, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

One could argue that as the highest peak, the area of Mt Everest is the area of all the land its sits on (Asia+Africa+Europe)... -- SGBailey (talk) 11:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

In trying to define the area of Everest, you would first have to consider what the dividing line is between Everest and its neigbors - Lhotse, for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Topographic prominence may be a useful read that leads people to answers here. Of course, by those definitions, Everest is the parent peak for the entire Afro-Eur-Asian landmass, as noted above. --Jayron32 15:23, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The issue is, what counts as the edge of the mountain? Which prominences below the summit count as part of the mountain, and which are counted as separate mountains? There is no widely accepted rule for defining the edges of a mountain, so it is impossible to give an accepted figure for its area. Marco polo (talk) 17:09, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

There is. Read the article. There's nice pictures and everything... --Jayron32 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Jayron, of course I read the article on topographic prominence before posting my response (though I knew most of the article's content already). Please don't be insulting. As you know, the prominence method results in defining the area of Mt. Everest as the entire Eurasian-African landmass. That's not a useful answer. Nor does the prominence method work very well with isolated mountains, whose areas according to that method might include vast lowlands. That brings us back to the issue of edges. Marco polo (talk) 16:07, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

You're correct. I was condescending and rude, and you did not deserve that. I apoligize for that. --Jayron32 17:03, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me what the OP is asking for is the area of the "footprint" occupied by the mountain, not the surface area of it as a 3-D object. But in either case, it's not like with a building where you can define the footprint pretty easily. Mountains don't stand alone, they are all part of the global geology. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:40, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

One way to approach this question is to go all fractal. "Can't tell you, fractals you know".

But how about a practical answer. How would you do a ballpark answer that doesn't go into the philosophy of what is the area of a bunch of quantum mechanical probability wave distributions of snow flakes' atoms.

How would you approach this question if you were working it out with a bunch of 12-year-olds who want a real answer at the end of the day? Don't argue where the mountain is, the Internet gives a reasonable enough definition. Don't argue what the area of meter x meter of rock face is, it's a square meter, fractals can go suck eggs. 88.112.50.121 (talk) 23:30, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The problem is, as noted, that other than the summit, mountains do NOT have a well-defined aspect to them. If you had some monadnock which had a clearly defined surrounding plain, you could set a pretty good approximation about where the mountain starts, and could roughly calculate the area inside the shape made by such a mountain's footprint. However, most mountains are parts of mountain ranges where the terrain isn't as simple as a single well-defined cone rising out of a flat plain. They're craggy messes where it's hard to define a complete polygon to define their footprint. There's the system, noted above in the Prominence article, of defining "parent peaks" and "daughter peaks", but, as also noted above, by that definition, Everest is literally the entire landmass it sits on. So that's not a helpful answer. The question isn't "not answerable" because we're splitting hairs over what the definition of a "mountain" is. The question is unanswerable because there's not a clear way to define the mountain in such a way to find a polygon to define the area of. --Jayron32 00:33, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

This reminds me of those high tech companies that interview potential employees with questions like "how many gas stations are there in California". The Wikipedia reference desk, as a collective, would spectacularly fail such an interview because it would get stuck on obsessing on "what is the area of a snowflake anyway". When we can't immediately do a back of the envelope calculation, attack the premise of the question. Surely we could have a more educational attitude here. 88.112.50.121 (talk) 01:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

If it's so easy, why haven't you provided that answer yourself. If we're guilty of attacking the question, you even more guilty for attacking those who attacked the question. That"s double the offense we have all made. If the problem is solvable in the way you describe, don't complain to us we're not solving it in the way you want us to solve it solve it yourself in that way and make fools of us all by showing us how easy it is to get the right answer. If you really want to shame us for doing a bad job, show us how easy it would be to do a good job. --Jayron32 12:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Mountain ranges can be described by a divide tree, see this link. But more interesting perhaps are watershed boundaries: a watershed is a region where rainfall will collect at the same point. I was thinking, if we turn the topography upside down, with the mountain peaks pointing downward, and imagine that the peak of every mountain (those that are considered seperate mountains, see the topographic prominence article) is a "drain", then every mountain top would have an associated watershed in our inverse landscape, and the surface area could be taken as the size of the "mountain base". If it's at all useful, I don't know, but it's one way to define it without ambiguity. Ssscienccce (talk) 08:15, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Jayron32 (talk · contribs). Asking for the "area" of one peak in a mountain range is like asking "how long is a piece of string ?". The hypothetical bunch of 12 year olds can learn the valuable lesson that not every question that can be asked makes sense. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:58, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, if forced to find the "area" of a mountain, I'd interpret it as the cross-sectional area of the base, to avoid the fractal problem. Then I'd get a topographical map, like this one: [14] (I'd like a larger map, though, if I could find it). I'd then arbitrarily pick a certain elevation contour, and declare that everything above that line is Everest, and everything below is not.

Then it would be a matter of calculating the 2D area within that contour, which is by no means trivial. In the case of Everest, it looks like it would be roughly triangular, so you could approximate it as a triangle and use the area calculation formula for a triangle. That would give me a WAG estimate. StuRat (talk) 12:32, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The real problem here is "What do you actually need to know and why?" - wanting to know that area of Mt Everest just because you want to know is kinda pointless. But if you were some kind of bizarre performance artist who wanted to cover the entire mountain with a 3" deep layer of chocolate or something - then you'd want the 3D area. If you're planning on making a detailed map of Everest and you need to know how much paper you need - then a 2D area is more interesting. In both cases, the limits of what constitutes a "mountain" would be something you'd need to define...for example, you might say "Every location that can be reached by going only downhill from the summit defines the area" - which might be interesting to an extreme skier! Or "every location that's within the administrative area of the local government" or "every square mile that's too mountainous to farm"...there are many, many definitions here. But the term "area" for something as vaguely delimited as a mountain is meaningless without knowing the context of the question. So WHY you need to know this is the critical thing here. "Area" is just a word...the number you want has to refer to something concrete. SteveBaker (talk) 15:05, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

As I've stated before, there is no generally accepted way of defining the edges of Mt. Everest, other than the prominence method which defines its edges as the entire Eurasian-African landmass, so there is no way to give an authoritative response as to its area. Certainly, someone could arbitrarily decide to consider certain cols and/or altitude lines as the boundaries of the mountain, but that would be a subjective choice, or opinion, and we aren't supposed to offer personal opinions on this reference desk. Incidentally, the method of defining the edges as "every location that can be reached by going only downhill from the summit" doesn't work well because it would exclude slight "false summits" on the flanks of the mountain and would include large parts of the Ganges-Brahmaputra watershed, including probably most of Bangladesh. Marco polo (talk) 16:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, the latter issue is the biggest problem—the enclosed area 'leaks out' by following the shoreline of any river that drains the flanks of Everest, since water is always going to run downhill. You end up inadvertently including entire oceans. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:42, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

It often strikes me as funny that we (meaning all humans, not just wikipedians) try to define things and then end up arguing over whether natural objects fit our definition, rather than the other way around. For example, arguments over what Europe is and what Asia is. The fact is that it's all one land mass. Any dividing line is arbitrary, artificial. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:58, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

And Africa is part of it too, the Suez Canal notwithstanding. The problem with any definition of continent is that, if applied rigorously, it will either exclude major parts of the world (e.g. Oceania is most definitely not a single land mass; and Japan and Indonesia et al are groups of islands) or offend our deeply culturally ingrained sense of these things (e.g. when Britons talk of visiting "the continent", they do not envisage it might include trips to Baikal, Baku, Bishkek, Beijing, Bangkok, Bangalore, Bhutan or Baghdad). We need to move to the notion of regions, and forget about continents. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:46, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you to all who replied to my question. Thuresson (talk) 23:22, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Rhys Lineage

Hello, my name is Jason Talbot Rice, and I am very curious to know more about how I am related to the surname Rhys. I could explain more, but I will need to talk one on one for that if need be. Otherwise, who could I start contacting to find out more information on that surname? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.40.38.244 (talk) 21:51, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Mormons? They're good at geneaology. There are some links to useful websites at the bottom of that article. wikt:Rhys says it's a given name meaning "ardor" and "firey warrior", which is also a patronymic surname, but I assume what you really wanted to know is "who were my Welsh ancestors" (assuming they weren't actually English, Irish or German as noted at Rice (surname)), so perhaps there's something useful in Category:Genealogy and Category:Genealogy websites.  Card Zero  (talk) 22:06, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I recommend you get yourself a trial membership at ancestry.com and see what you can find out. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Do you know where your male-line ancestors have lived back to either 1940 (USA) or 1911 (UK)? If so, you can get census data from Ancestry.com to take you back several decades more. (I have an English form of a Welsh surname, and Ancestry gets me back as far as monoglot Welsh hill-farmers.) AlexTiefling (talk) 00:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)