Slightly cheaper elephants?

Slightly cheaper elephants?

[Vaughan Pratt]

Normally I click the "No thanks, just place my order" button at Amazon when
asked whether I want to "Share the Love".  This feature lets you supply
a list of friends ahead of time whom you can email after your purchase
of a book with the happy news that you've secured them a 10% discount
on that book.  I ignore this feature because it casts you in the role of
Amazon salesperson and turns your friends into your clientele for as long
as they remain on your euphemistically named "Amazon Friends list."  At 10%
I find this role downright embarrassing.

Now if I could get my friends 100% discounts, or maybe even 50%, I'd have
to reconsider this.  I was just about to click the "No thanks" button on
my preorder of Peter's "Sketches of an Elephant" when it occurred to me
that a 10% discount on enough money to buy a house (ok a doll-house) was
the monetary equivalent of a 50% or even 100% discount on a lesser tome.

So this raises two questions.  First, are other sources of "Elephant" at
17% or better off Amazon's $295.00 price available to us eager students
of toposophy?  (See below for why 17%, $245.50 to be precise, and not 10%.)
And if not, is there anyone who'd been contemplating the purchase within
the next week (Amazon's time limit) who'd like to be on my list, even if
just temporarily for the sake of this one book, in order to be able to get
it for the amazingly low price of $245.50?  (Oh, that's the one I would
have chosen, sir, just sign right here, and here, and here.)

OUP presumably does the best off this deal, with Amazon next and me third if
I end up with at least two "friends."  (With only one "friend" the friend
relationship may as well have been symmetric since each side gets 10% off,
but that's still a 10% discount for each of two purchasers of the book.
The only advantage of no "friends" is you get to keep all your real friends,
but then no one gets a 10% discount that way.)

One thing about this system that I find truly evil is that if 2n purchasers
form n pairs in this way so that every purchaser winds up with a 10% discount
on the book in question, this seemingly fairest of all arrangements turns
out to be suboptimal for the purpose of extracting discounts from Amazon.
The optimum is to elect a single salesperson, who buys the book at no
discount, after which every purchase of that book within that week extracts
20% per book, half of which goes to the latest purchaser and the other half
to the elected salesperson.  With enough "friends" the salesperson who
took the original risk makes out like a bandit!

I propose to reverse this as follows.  I'll buy my copy at $295.00.  Anyone
wanting to be my "Amazon friend for a week" can then get it at $265.50.
To spare me the embarrassment of becoming a salesman I'll send you an Amazon
gift certificate for $20 which further gets your price down to $245.50.
I still clear $9.50 (if I haven't lost a decimal point somewhere like those
Anderson guys did), which means that if three people join this cockamamie
scheme (my gamble I guess) then I end up with close to the discount I'd
have gotten with only one friend, but my friends then become real friends
because I'm offering them $49.50 (16.7%) discounts on a book from Amazon.
Or two such if they buy two copies.

So, if anyone who was planning to postpone their doll-house purchase in
favour of buying two copies, or even just one copy, of Peter's book on huge
arches (ele arch, phant huge), please let me know and I'll add your name to
my list.  I will hold off on the actual purchase however until it is clear
that everyone who wants to be in on this in anything like a reasonable time
frame has joined, since the opportunity cost of splitting this arrangement
into multiple weeks is $59.00 per split (proof by induction, with the base
case being one purchaser, who gets no discount, whereas a second purchaser
brings the total discount to $59.00).

If you spot anything I've misinterpreted about Amazon's Share the Love scheme
in the above, *please* let me know soon before this hole is dug too deep.

Vaughan

Re: Slightly cheaper elephants?

[Prof. Peter Johnstone]

Vaughan's message prompts me to pass on the information, received
today, that the U.S. end of OUP has already sold out of copies of
(at least) the second volume of the "Elephant", due to higher than
expected sales. The U.K. end still has some copies, but they are just
about to reprint, six months before they expected to do so. What
implication (if any) this has for the availability of the book from
Amazon, I have no idea.

Peter Johnstone
--------------
On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Vaughan Pratt wrote:

> Normally I click the "No thanks, just place my order" button at Amazon when
> asked whether I want to "Share the Love".  This feature lets you supply
> a list of friends ahead of time whom you can email after your purchase
> of a book with the happy news that you've secured them a 10% discount
> on that book.  I ignore this feature because it casts you in the role of
> Amazon salesperson and turns your friends into your clientele for as long
> as they remain on your euphemistically named "Amazon Friends list."  At 10%
> I find this role downright embarrassing.
>
> Now if I could get my friends 100% discounts, or maybe even 50%, I'd have
> to reconsider this.  I was just about to click the "No thanks" button on
> my preorder of Peter's "Sketches of an Elephant" when it occurred to me
> that a 10% discount on enough money to buy a house (ok a doll-house) was
> the monetary equivalent of a 50% or even 100% discount on a lesser tome.
>
> So this raises two questions.  First, are other sources of "Elephant" at
> 17% or better off Amazon's $295.00 price available to us eager students
> of toposophy?  (See below for why 17%, $245.50 to be precise, and not 10%.)
> And if not, is there anyone who'd been contemplating the purchase within
> the next week (Amazon's time limit) who'd like to be on my list, even if
> just temporarily for the sake of this one book, in order to be able to get
> it for the amazingly low price of $245.50?  (Oh, that's the one I would
> have chosen, sir, just sign right here, and here, and here.)
>
> OUP presumably does the best off this deal, with Amazon next and me third if
> I end up with at least two "friends."  (With only one "friend" the friend
> relationship may as well have been symmetric since each side gets 10% off,
> but that's still a 10% discount for each of two purchasers of the book.
> The only advantage of no "friends" is you get to keep all your real friends,
> but then no one gets a 10% discount that way.)
>
> One thing about this system that I find truly evil is that if 2n purchasers
> form n pairs in this way so that every purchaser winds up with a 10% discount
> on the book in question, this seemingly fairest of all arrangements turns
> out to be suboptimal for the purpose of extracting discounts from Amazon.
> The optimum is to elect a single salesperson, who buys the book at no
> discount, after which every purchase of that book within that week extracts
> 20% per book, half of which goes to the latest purchaser and the other half
> to the elected salesperson.  With enough "friends" the salesperson who
> took the original risk makes out like a bandit!
>
> I propose to reverse this as follows.  I'll buy my copy at $295.00.  Anyone
> wanting to be my "Amazon friend for a week" can then get it at $265.50.
> To spare me the embarrassment of becoming a salesman I'll send you an Amazon
> gift certificate for $20 which further gets your price down to $245.50.
> I still clear $9.50 (if I haven't lost a decimal point somewhere like those
> Anderson guys did), which means that if three people join this cockamamie
> scheme (my gamble I guess) then I end up with close to the discount I'd
> have gotten with only one friend, but my friends then become real friends
> because I'm offering them $49.50 (16.7%) discounts on a book from Amazon.
> Or two such if they buy two copies.
>
> So, if anyone who was planning to postpone their doll-house purchase in
> favour of buying two copies, or even just one copy, of Peter's book on huge
> arches (ele arch, phant huge), please let me know and I'll add your name to
> my list.  I will hold off on the actual purchase however until it is clear
> that everyone who wants to be in on this in anything like a reasonable time
> frame has joined, since the opportunity cost of splitting this arrangement
> into multiple weeks is $59.00 per split (proof by induction, with the base
> case being one purchaser, who gets no discount, whereas a second purchaser
> brings the total discount to $59.00).
>
> If you spot anything I've misinterpreted about Amazon's Share the Love scheme
> in the above, *please* let me know soon before this hole is dug too deep.
>
> Vaughan
>
>
>
>

Re: Slightly cheaper elephants?

[Vidhyanath Rao]

> My apologies but I have abandonded this project, per my most recent
post to
> the categories list.  If you're not a member of AMS, SIAM, or LMS and
would
> still like to be part of a group purchase from Amazon, please let me
know and
> I can put you in touch with the others in that situation who've
contacted me.

According to the e-mail I received from Ms. Jones (see below), this is
available only from the UK catalog. So those of us in the US may still
find it worthwhile to go through Amazon, or wait for the possibility
that similar discount may be offered in the US at some point in the
future.

--------

Dear Mr Rao

This discount is only available in the UK catalogues (OUP distributes
and
markets AMS titles in Europe)
but I am making a discretionary exception  for Prof Pratt because of
current
unavailability of this title
in the US.

Re: Slightly cheaper elephants?

[Vaughan Pratt]

In my previous post under this subject line I asked two questions.

>First, are other sources of "Elephant" at 17% or better off Amazon's $295.00
>price available to us eager students of toposophy?

As it turns out, OUP is happy to offer 20% off this book for AMS, SIAM,
and LMS members.

As an AMS member I have suddenly forgotten what the second question was.

I hereby bequeath to nonmembers of the aforesaid societies my little theorem
about Amazon discounts, that for any bulk purchase accomplished within a
week, with Amazon handling both billing and distribution (separate shipping
addresses for each book), purchase of n+1 copies of the same book nets a
total discount of 20n% (n/5) for the n+1 purchasers, that is, n/(5*(n+1))
per purchaser.

Amazon distributes n/10 of this to the first purchaser and 1/10 to each of
the remaining n purchasers.

With Amazon's system, the first purchaser breaks even at the second purchase
(each purchaser nets 10%) and draws ahead with the third (the first purchaser
gets 20% and the other two 10%).

A group organizing for this purpose may prefer a completely equitable system,
in which each of the n+1 parties receives a discount of n/(5*(n+1)) (20%
of n/(n+1)).  Complete parity should therefore be achieved when the first
purchaser distributes n/(5*(n+1)) - 1/10 = (n-1)/(10*(n+1)) to each of the
other purchasers, but read Amazon's "Share the Love" rules in full before
ordering the first book.  Bear in mind that Amazon offers free shipping to
those not in a tearing hurry for knowledge.

A first purchaser with a taste for simplicity and a gambling spirit may wish
to offer a flat 1/6 discount to each of the other purchasers, keeping n/30 of
the remainder.  Breakeven in this scheme is at n=5 (a total of 6 purchasers).
I was close to that point when OUP's Alison Jones (Jonesal@oup.co.uk) answered
my first question in the affirmative, whom members of the aforementioned
societies should contact with their orders (if I have correctly interpreted
her emails to me on the subject, which seemed clear enough).

While all this may seem a bit hard on nonmembers of these societies, for
whom n could be advantageously larger if the members joined in this plan,
rest assured that the patiently supportive members of these worthy and
worthwhile academic societies do not feel your pain.

One other disadvantage of ordering from Amazon is that they appear to know
only about the 2-volume set of 1600 pages at $295, and not the higher-priced
individual volumes, for which one would expect Amazon to ask perhaps $170 each
were they to offer them.  If you aren't Superman planning to read and absorb
the whole 1600 pages in one speed-reading pass, and didn't need something
more substantial than the phone directory to stand on when rescuing the
cat off the top china shelf, you might wish to consider the ergonomic and
durability benefits of two separate volumes, the higher cost notwithstanding.

I do hope Peter J. does reasonably well off all this, heaven knows he's
worked hard enough and insightfully enough for it.

Vaughan