Welcome to Jester's Trek. You can follow along, if you want...
Monday, October 17, 2011  Orders of magnitude  Quick one looking
at Goonswarm Shrugged.  Logarithmic charts are useful for
gauging short-term trends.  As long as you don't over-rely on
them or try to read too much into them, they can be useful for
determining if a short-term trend has "legs."  They operate by
damping down differences and looking at orders of magnitude: if
something is happening dozens of times a day, it'll show up as a
"10" on a logarithmic chart; if it's happening a couple hundred
times a day, it'll show up as a "100" and so on.  Large peaks
and valleys are flattened, and you look for flat lines: they
indicate a steady trend with long-term potential.  Similarly,
large growing or declining curves are similarly damped down. 
Only the most dramatic growth or decline will show as spikes on
the graph.  You can also use these growth or decline curves to
spot the reasons for the trend.  If elements within your trend
match the growing o