Gas Price Tipping Point

Here are a couple of interesting graphs. The first is from BlogPulse, showing discussion around gas prices and oil prices. Note that there is a sudden surge of buzz starting at the beginning of August.

The second show historical gas price data provided by the Department of Energy.

While there is a clear correlation (two main peaks, one in April and one now) the graph of buzz suggests that a tipping point has been reached and people are becoming far more vocal. I'm infering this based purely on the data presented here, without having drilled down to analyze all the messages that form the large body of recent buzz, so there may be some other reason for this, but on the surface it makes for a compelling story.

Comments

[Kevin Burton]

Any idea what the spike was just before the 24th?

Would be interesting to watch this from now on... to see if it falls.

Kevin

[Matt Galloway]

Matthew, this is great stuff. I've expanded on the theme a bit back on my blog.

-Matt

[Matthew Hurst]

Kevin - it looks like that spike followed an all time high ($59 or $58 depending on where you read) for oil prices. I'll get back to this data in a few weeks (I wish there was a good mechanism to add a 'must do follow up' postit somewhere on typepad, currently I write a draft post and save it, but I have to remember to go back to see all the draft posts...)