Question: The three career home run leaders are Barry Bonds (762 career home runs at the end of the 2007 season), Hank Aaron (755 career home runs), and Babe Ruth (714 career home runs). In Chapter 12 we compared the careers of these sluggers using the five-number summary and boxplots. We pay for what we value, so another way to compare these players is by their salaries. Bonds's highest salary was $22,000,000 in 2005. Aaron's highest salary was $250,000 in 1976. And Ruth's highest salary was $80,000 in 1931.
Bonds's highest salary is by far the largest. Does this mean he is clearly the best of the three? We know that a dollar in 1931 bought a lot more than a dollar in 1976, and both bought more than a dollar in 2005. Maybe in terms of buying power, Aaron's or Ruth's salary is highest.
In this chapter we discuss methods for comparing the buying power of the dollar across different years. By the end of this chapter you will be able to determine whether Bonds, Aaron, or Ruth had the highest salary in terms of buying power.