by ThomVincent » Wed Mar 09, 2011 7:41 am
Paul,
Per ronw's question, are the Official Currency Conversion Rates posted somewhere for N-Prize? If they are, could you please post a link to them here? I have not been able to locate them. Thanks.
-----
Paul & Everyone,
Because I have been interested to know what the available budget is in US dollars, I have done some research to attempt to figure this out on my own. Here is the approach I have been using, for anyone who wishes to verify/research this.
I found the historical currency data at FT.com, but did not see a way to search that data for the high and low exchange rates, for an ad hoc time period. Perhaps I missed it? Not sure.
Over at OandA.com I found an historical exchange rate search capability that seems to work quite well.
OandA.com records their exchange rate data slightly differently, or have a different source, than FT.com -- so the numbers for any given day do not match exactly between OandA and FT. However, the OandA search capability makes it easy to narrow down from 9 months, to a couple weeks, when each exchange rate is at it's highest. Those couple weeks can then be searched at the FT.com site, to get 'official' exchange rates.
-----
First, I created a list of the relevant countries and currencies. I included all the counties from the currently listed N-Prize Teams: UK, US, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Ghana, Canada, and Poland.
I then added countries that were not on the list, but that Wikipedia lists as having put a rocket in orbit: Russia, Ukraine, France, Japan, China, Europe, India, Israel, and Iran. Even if no Team enters N-Prize from these countries, people there may be interested in learning about N-Prize -- so there may be PR value in listing the N-Prize budget in their national currencies.
And, as a generic comparison value, I added the exchange rate for Gold.
-----
Second, for each currency, I looked up its exchange rate with the British Pound (GBP) for 09 April 2008 through 09 January 2009, inclusive. I highlighted the dates for the top ten exchange rates for each currency. I then resorted the data, to see where those highlighted dates grouped together.
-----
Third, for each currency, I check the highlighted dates on FT.com -- plus a couple days before and after -- to find FT's best exchange rate.
-----
I completed both the First and Second steps for all the countries / currencies listed above. Since that took so much time, I have only completed the Third step for US Dollars. However, anyone else is welcome to perform the Third step for any or all of the remaining currencies, if they choose.
I will post my results from the Second and Third steps in separate posts.
Cheers,
Thom