Statistics

Statistics, Reporting and Accounting

With all this currency going round, and so many members, logins, accounts, groups, people, offer-categories, transaction types, localities, there will need to be a sophisticated way of gathering
statistics. In fact just about financial calculation will involve a complex query on the transactions table, linked to other tables, so robust handling of this will need to be built in from the ground.

• Headline statistics will be chosen and shown on the front page of the web site by the content author - (roles in the system need definining, rather than just being slipped in).
• There will need also to be an administrative search toolkit which can search either transactions, members, accounts, offers / wants, groups, by almost any criteria they have. This search, saved, might form the basis for the headline statistics. Or, with a variable in it, might be used at various points within the system. There may be some kind of syntax evolve for a searching, and for xml feeds
• search results will also need to be ranked according to various criteria. For example we might want the top five traders in currency A in the last month, by volume, or by number of transactions. Or the top ten most indebted people in a certain locality
• the system will need a range of accounting tools yet to be thought about.
• it should be able to draw attractive charts. For example, I may want to view my balance history for each of my currencies on my profile page, or on the page that talks about my currency, I may want to generate a chart showing the trade-volume-history of that currency, or, as a offers directory manager, I may want to see volumes of trades in each category to inform my category-keyword choices, or to notice changes in patterns.
• There should also be at least a rudimentary reporting strategy, showing people's browsing patterns.

It might be a good idea to compose a booklet or even a module helping administrators to show exactly which transaction statistics they can imagine.

John says: Statistical data will be generated from transaction records. Traditionally this has simply been recorded as "balance" and "turnover", but for most people this is a little obscure. This system will provide feedback direct to members by showing a list of trades with running statistics, such as: [number of trades, total income, average income, total expenditure, average expenditure], within a given period, e.g. for the past month, and for the past year."

It will also produce visual indicators to show skew/bias (i.e. the extent to which a particular currency favours one group of individuals over another), connectivity, clustering, etc. (see for example http://www.esrad.org.uk/projects/LCS/ccs-indicators.html).

If memberss and system administrators can view this data not only as a complete set (anonymously) but also in comparative relationships between specific members, the accumulated trade details will provide as a by-product a constantly updated directory of what has actually been traded. One use of such a record is as an "inspiration list" for prospective members."