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.
Features not enabled on this graph:
Optimistic projection ?
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.
Moving average ?
This is an exponentially weighted moving average with smoothing constant 0.25. It shows the overall trend of your data, but lagged. 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 is another way — proposed in The Hacker's Diet — to see the forest through the trees, to see past the daily random fluctuations to what your weight is really doing.
Polynomial fit trend ?
Think of this as a very thick line charting your progress or an aura around your actual data. (Technically it's a polynomial fit of your data.) It gives you a sense of your true trend.
