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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Unreliable

You can see right away that the red line on the graph is spastic. That's because it's a ratio of "change in" values. And the right-hand scale shows it. The units are Change, Billions of Dollars divided by Change, Billions of dollars.

However...
... See the white box at the bottom of the image? The one labeled "EDIT DATA SERIES 2..."

About in the middle of that box are the red letters "a" and "b" in parentheses. These are the two sets of data that I used to create the red line on the graph. The one labeled "a" correctly shows Change, Billions of Dollars as the units I want to use. The one labeled "b" correctly shows Billions of Dollars as the units I want.

But the graph doesn't show what I want. I want Change in Billions, divided by Billions. What the graph shows is Change in Billions, divided by Change in Billions.

This problem never came up before they "improved" FRED.

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