Thought Bloggles

Statistics: You're doing it wrong. Except if you're a professional statistician, in which case any wrong-doing would be expected to at least be intentional. I've been tallying my tasks with a simple chart like this: This is a compressed version of the markings in the diary. For each day, I tally the number of tasks done, migrated, or cancelled, plus the ones that got postponed. I think of it as a "wind diagram". It is a rather nice representation, for it not only pretty but also self-correcting: If any of the +N columns have a number, there must be a number as least that large down and to the left. The difference is the number of tasks of that postponement that got finished that way. It also allows me to correct mismarkings, such as when I miscount the number of dashes in a postponement marker (marked with a *). It's also very simple to make, only requiring looking at one day at a time and counting marks. The "Abs" column is just a summation...