Understanding Index Charts and Log Scales

Understanding Index Charts and Log Scales

Index Charts are a great way to compare events that don’t happen at the same time; for example, how are sales this quarter vs. last quarter, vs. a year ago this quarter?

There are lots of business cases for this type of chart.

What about log scales?

Had you asked me two years ago I would have said I doubt you would need this within a business context, let alone need to interpret log scales in order to understand the news.

Then the pandemic hit and if you wanted to understand cases and deaths, you needed to understand both index charts and log scales.

Here’s a video from our April 2020 Chart Chat that explains how the charts work. It also explains how if you double a penny every day for a month, you’ll have over $5M by the end of the month.