Archive for May, 2012

Trends 2

Friday, May 4th, 2012

On April 27, I posted a mystery graph with four data points: “a real-world graph, representing honest information about a current situation.” I asked some questions based on the graph.

I got one guess, from Michael Golrick, and it was an excellent set of estimates based only on the information available in the graph.

I said I’d provide more information later, and so I shall. But not, just yet, a lot more information–although what I provide here just might be enough to give away the mystery.

More data points

Here’s the same real-world graph–but with nine additional data points added preceding the four in the previous graph. For consistency, I’ve numbered the new points 0 through -8.

At this point, asking for guesses as to data points 5, 6, 7, and 8 may seem absurd…as may asking when it will hit 100.

But I’ll take whatever comments you have, for about another week. Although this may be enough to note that even legitimate subsets of data may be wildly misleading…