#theydidthemath

First: egg prices have soared 60% in a year due to an Avian Flu (courtesy Wall Street Journal).

Second: There was a huge Ticketmaster fiasco with Taylor Swift's Eras Tour tickets (courtesy NPR). Swifties got so upset that there was a Senate hearing about it.

Third: At the Grammies, host Trevor Noah said to Taylor that her fans can do anything, so he asked her to tell her fans to address the price of eggs (video here from Reddit).

Which leads to the question: If every Taylor Swift fan became vegan and stopped consuming eggs, would that address the price of eggs?

We use two sources, here and here. Now, I am not an economist, but I did take two courses in economics as an undergraduate and almost got an A in one of them. So we will assume some basic knowledge about supply/demand curves from microeconomics. I don't remember the difference between micro- and macroeconomics but I'll assume that microeconomics is good enough for this problem.

Here is the first source:

Here is the second source.

First, let's estimate the demand curve, in other words: assume the demand curve is fixed and supply has changed.

Comparing October 2022 and January 2203, the second source shows that the SEDI (Shell Egg Demand Indicator) has stayed roughly the same, while the first source shows that egg supply has decreased while prices have increased. This gives us two data points for the demand curve: (1.28m quantity, $5.30/dozen) and (1.4m quantity, $3.00/dozen). These are the two black and blue dots below:

Next, we estimate the supply curve, in other words: assume the supply curve is fixed and demand has changed. According to a friend who is actually a tenured professor in economics, "in the short run the supply curve is going to be basically flat" which I assume means that I should look at a short time frame and assume the supply curve is fixed.

Comparing October 2022 and September 2022, the first source shows a sharp spike in prices in correspondence with a slightly increase in supply. This would predict an increase in demand, and in fact the second source does show a spike in demand during September-October 2022. This is the black dot and green X in the image (with the red dot being the maximum). This gives us a third data point: (1.45m quantity and $4.10/dozen).

Now that we have three data points, let's make some estimates on the demand/supply curves, assuming that they are linear with the same slope (yay Econ 101).

The demand curve, based on the two points above, looks like it's P = 29.9-19.2Q. Now, the supply curve back in September 2022, based on the two points (1.4m quantity, $3/dozen) and (1.45m quantity and $4.10/dozen) indicate a supply curve of P = -27.8 + 22Q (Yes, the slope is "22." No, I did not plan this in advance). Now, I will assume that the Avian flu caused the supply curve to move upwards without changing the slope, because that's the Wikipedia page on supply and demand has. In order to match the data point (1.28m quantity, $5.3/dozen), this means that the current supply curve is P = -22.9+22Q.

Finally, let's assume that Taylor's fans have given up eggs, which moves the demand curve. I believe the SEDI counts "eggs on hand", which I assume is the number of eggs in a refrigerator but I'm too lazy to double-check. Again I will assume that the slope of the demand curve stays the same. Now, according to this WSJ/IPSOS poll, about 3% of the US population are big fans, 12% are big/moderate fans, and 44% are big/moderate/little fans. So in the demand curve, we write quantity in terms of price as

Q = (29.9-P)/19.2

And now the new demand curve is 

Q=(C*29.9-P)/(19.2)

C where C takes values in {0.97 0.88,0.56}. We then check where the new Taylor--modified demand curve intersects the supply curve. We get:

$4.81 per dozen

$3.38 per dozen

-$1.73 per dozen.

Ok, so the last one is clearly non-realistic because we can't have negative prices. The curve probably isn't linear.

Looking back at the graph of source 1, we see that the peak egg price pre-"august" is $3.50. So the conclusion is that if every big or moderate Taylor Swift fan went vegan, the price of eggs (to retailers) would drop to about $3.38, which would completely address the price of eggs.

Almost all high schools provide forty-five (45) minutes break everyday in the middle of the day for us to eat, chat and lollygag a bit. Well you could've used this time to be efficient, right? So let us calculate how many books you could have read if you used every lunch break to read books.

According to a 2014 study the average number of pages in books published in the year 2014 was four hundred (400) pages. A regular A4 sized Microsoft Word document with twelve point size font and default margins will contain four hundred (400) words. So an average book should contain one hundred sixty thousand (160,000) words. The reading speed of an average person is two hundred fifty (250) to three hundred (300) words per minute. Since the aim here is to not only to read but also to understand I will reduce the reading speed to two hundred (200) words per minute. This shall cover the time spent on understanding what we read. This implies the average time took by a person to read one books is eight hundred (800) minutes I am not sure but the total number of days I attended school maybe around two-hundred (200) days, I guess. Therefore the total minutes of lunch break I enjoyed equals nine thousand (9,000) minutes. This is enough to read almost eleven (11) books.