Your actual reported data. The color shows where you are with respect to your bright red line:
Green:
> 3 days of buffer
Blue:
~ 2 days of buffer
Orange:
~ 1 day of buffer
Red:
crossed the red line
Bright Red Line ?
Keep your dots on the good side of this bright red line!
Colored guiding lines ?
The orange line shows one day of safety buffer. The blue line is two days, and the green line demarcates seven days of safety buffer.
(If you keep your safety buffer at 7 days or higher then you're immune to being stung. If anything comes up, just flatten your bright red line. It will take effect after the 7-day akrasia horizon but since you have that much safety buffer, you're golden!)
Yellow guide lines ?
These thin yellow lines indicate the good side of the bright red line.
Akrasia horizon ?
This line is a week away from now. You can only make changes in the steepness of your red line beyond the akrasia horizon.
Pink zone ?
This shaded pink zone on the wrong side of your bright line shows the bare minimum that you are committed to doing this week. Your red line can never get easier and dip into this forbidden zone.
Infinitely safe region ?
This light yellow shaded region shows the infinitely safe area. If your datapoints are in this zone, then you have exceeded the final total of your graph, and your safety buffer is unbounded. You usually see this as your goal approaches the end date, or if you have an infinitely flat bright red line for some reason.
Skull & Crossbones ?
We fly the Jolly Roger on your graph if it freezes. The primary way this happens is if you derail when your graph is scheduled to be archived.
Watermarks ?
The watermarks in the corner regions of your graph (shown darker here) indicate your current pledge amount and how much safety buffer you have. How safe you are is shown on the good side of the red line, and the amount pledged is shown on the derails-this-way side.
Optimistic projection (deprecated) ?
An optimistic view of progress, i.e., a view of your data through rose-colored glasses. It shows your inexorable march towards your goal. If you're bouncing around it just shows you flat. When you go down (or whichever direction your goal is), it shows you that right away.
It never shows you going up (or whatever the wrong direction is) unless it's sure you've screwed up.
If you find the random fluctuation unnerving, you can focus on the pink dots day-to-day.
Features not enabled on this graph:
Moving average ?
This is a moving average implemented as an IIR filter. If most of your daily numbers are below this trend line then you are inexorably dragging it down.
For the case of weight loss, this was inspired by The Hacker's Diet as a way to see the forest through the trees, to see past the daily random fluctuations to what your weight is really doing.
Smoothed trend swath ?
Think of this as a very thick line charting your progress or an aura around your actual data. It's like the moving average line but fatter and smoother, and it extends past your actual data as a kind of projection into the future, in case that's useful. (Gory details on the blog.)
Max flux ?
This thicker yellow line denotes the user-specified maximum daily fluctuation, shown as an offset from the bright red line. Details in the FAQ.
Standard flux ?
This dashed yellow line indicates a so-called 90% variance derived from your data, shown as an offset from the bright red line. Details in the FAQ.
Careful what order you edit datapoints in. Beeminder derails you if your data crosses the red line, even retroactively.
