Week 10: Lecture 4 — Should You Wait?
Waiting for a better price is a bet you can calculate roughly. This lecture works the calculation live on the $249 headphones.
28 September 2026
This lecture is the live version of Week 10: waiting is treated as a bet about possible future prices, not a guess about one exact future price. The deck works through expected value on the $249 headphones step by step before asking the class to set a clear buy-or-wait rule.
Outline#
- waiting as a bet, and why future price can be estimated but not known
- expected value in plain language, then as a formula
- stock-out risk, urgency, and the value of having it now
- worked example: the $249 headphones and a hypothetical sale to $199
- when expected saving is big enough to make waiting worthwhile
- how this feeds Assessment 3, Build a Buying Engine
- an in-class decision challenge, solved live
Teaching team
- Idris Fenn — tutor