No Napping LO13656 -Comments

Bill Harris (billh@lsid.hp.com)
Fri, 16 May 1997 16:32:41 -0800 (PDT)

Replying to LO13624 --

Joe,

> Here are more comments on Jotting #72.

> But that's not the reason for using 'em!!!! If I have a product line
> growing at 15% per year on a base of $1Billion a year, comparing it to
> a competitor growing at 25% per year on a $300Million per year base
> may or may not be easy to do on standard [linear-linear] paper. But
> it's one SNAP to figure out EXACTLY when the competitor will overtake
> you [assuming both growth rates stay the same] when it's done on the
> OTHER kind of paper (semilog).

If you look at the branch of statistics called exploratory data analysis
(e.g., "Understanding Robust and Exploratory Data Analysis" by Hoaglin,
Mosteller and Tukey, ch. 4), you will find a fair emphasis on transforming
data to create linear relationships for some of the same reasons mentioned
in this exchange.

Regards,

Bill 

-- 
Bill Harris                             Hewlett-Packard Co. 
R&D Engineering Processes               Lake Stevens Division 
domain: billh@lsid.hp.com               M/S 330
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