Monday, August 13, 2007

Annual Report: Life Events Timeline


Timeline widgets are great for seeing events
and how they relate to each other temporally. Synchronized graphs such as
those used in financial
charts
and by Google
Trends
further show temporal
relationships and even hint at cause-effect relationships between events.



I've thought of several graphs for the annual
report
that would
have a chronological
X-axis and some
piece of data on the Y-axis. It would be interesting to put a timeline of
significant life events at the bottom of a page with all those graphs. The
X-axis would be synchronised across the graphs so that I could easily see how
the birth of a child affected my reserve savings or effective tax rate.



It should be easy enough to find data for the timeline from my own memory of life events such as getting married, children's birthdays, moving to a new house, starting a new job, etc.



3 comments:

Travis Hendricks said...

That is an awesome idea. I would really like to see a chart like that comparing the amount of time I spend with the girlfriend in the weeks following a new Nintendo game release. Or see if I tend to eat less when it's summer time.

mndrix said...

Great examples, TanookiTravis. I know that as a family, we eat less during the summer. In the winter, our grocery budget is pretty tight, but during the summer, we always have money left over. If only there were a handy way to track the number of calories I consumed. Hmm ... I think I need one of those tracheotomy holes.

Anonymous said...

People should read this.