A number of people have tried to devise ways to quantify how well or poorly the economy is doing at any given time.

In the 1800s, former Providence Journal reporter Charles H. Dow, along with Brown University dropout and occasional Journal contributor Edward D. Jones, developed a series of averages to measure the performance of the stock markets, the best known of which is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (After their days at The Providence Journal, they also founded a financial newsletter, calling it the Wall Street Journal.)

A number of indexes try to measure Rhode Island's economy, including the Current Conditions Index by University of Rhode Island economist Leonard Lardaro and the Jobs & Opportunity Index developed by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity. Those indexes involve subjective weighting of indicators and complicated calculations to arrive at their conclusions, and the results can be difficult to grasp.

With today's introduction of the Providence Journal Economic Scorecard, the newspaper and website offer a simple score that reveals the performance of 11 key economic indicators in the current quarter of the year compared with the same quarter a year ago. A score of 11 would mean Rhode Island's economy is firing on all cylinders, every indicator improving, while a -11 would mean nothing's going right, at least not economically. Any number above zero means most indicators showed improvement, while a negative number means most indicators declined.

How is the score determined?

The current level for each indicator is compared with its level one year ago. If it shows improvement, it is scored +1. If it shows decline, it is scored -1. If it hasn't changed, it is scored 0. The scores for all 11 are added up to get the economic scorecard value.

What indicators are used?

The Journal draws the raw indicators from a number of state and federal government and private agencies: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the R.I. secretary of state's office and the R.I. Association of Realtors.

They include several measures of the employment market, the housing market, personal income, new businesses, people in economic distress and the overall production of the economy.

We chose indicators that are updated at least every quarter of the year, because the scorecard will be updated quarterly. A number of excellent indicators, including those measuring household income and poverty, are not included because they are updated only once a year.

Why don't all the indicators line up time-wise?

Two factors prevent all the indicators from lining up.

First, some indicators come out quarterly, some monthly, and some daily. These have all been converted to "quarterly" values, either by taking the latest monthly statistic or by adding up all of the daily statistics to come up with a three-month total.

More limiting, though, is that some of the indicators are delayed up to three quarters of the year behind real time. To include all of them on a same-time-frame basis would mean having to wait almost nine months for the slowest one. That may work for economists studying history, but not for a newspaper. So we use the latest available figures.

This creates a scorecard that reflects the perception of the time. So, on the facing page, the quarterly scorecard for July 2018 shows what the economy looks like based on the best information available this month.

Why compare the current quarter with a year ago?

To calculate the score on the scale from -11 to +11, a quarter is compared with the same quarter a year earlier, rather than to the previous quarter.

This is to counter a phenomenon prevalent in economic data called seasonality. More people buy houses in warmer months than in colder months, so an increase in sales from winter to spring doesn't mean much. A change from one spring to the next is more meaningful. Several of the indicators have strong seasonality, as can be seen by the jagged ups and downs on their graphs. Others show smoother lines, largely because the federal government applies seasonal adjustments to its statistics to smooth things out.

When down is up ...

For two of the indicators — bankruptcy filings and unemployment rate — things are better when the numbers go down, so the score is +1 if the current quarter's score is lower than the same quarter a year ago.