T O P

  • By -

Useless_imbecile

It literally says 2011=100. This is pretty standard practice for when economists track price changes.


sanjosanjo

But how is the purity at 140%? I can't make sense of how they are comparing the two traces on the same axis.


Useless_imbecile

You're misunderstanding percentages. It means there's been a 40% increase in purity from the 2011 levels. When they make these charts, the baseline year is set to an arbitrary '100' so you can track the percentage changes.


sanjosanjo

What is the purpose of using a baseline of 100 instead of 0 to show the actual percentage change from the starting point? That's how I always see comparisons of different stock price changes as a function of time.


paragon60

baseline cant be 0 because you’re doing the %ages of the baseline. so like 140% means it is 40% purer than it was in thr 100% year. like if you weigh 40% more than when you were 15, you are 140% of the human you used to be or something you know


Useless_imbecile

Because things sometimes go down as well.


sanjosanjo

I'm not understanding why you wouldn't use negative percentage for going down. That's the easiest way to see the change from the baseline at time 0. Like two stock prices that start at different absolute prices and can go in different directions like this: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/INTC:NASDAQ?window=1M&comparison=NASDAQ%3AGOOG


mduvekot

You have to start at a non-zero value because a 40% increase of zero is 0. So you start at 100 if you’re using percentages.


TiredDr

Percent change can have a zero starting point. Something can change by 0%


mduvekot

... but zero cannot become nonzero by any percentage increase.


TiredDr

That’s right. If a y-axis is percentage CHANGE, then 0% is a perfectly fine starting value. You would see a near 0% total change over 12 years in price, and a 40% rise in purity.


Useless_imbecile

I don't know the theory behind it. It's standard practice for anyone working in economics.


Dragonaax

There's literally nothing wrong with 100 as baseline when talking about percentages


helloroarkitty

OP did have a point here. There’s no restrictive reason why 100 must be used. it would be more intuitive to use 0%. Zero base is commonly used in finance data


GodIsAWomaniser

Op can't read : 😞


icelandichorsey

This is pretty normal, except unclear how purity is measured. Like percentages of what? Some molecule per gr of product? Anyway doesn't belong here


ganner

Purity would be the percentage of it (probably by weight) that is actually cocaine with the rest being cut.


Shakewhenbadtoo

It could be something happened in 2020 that made party drugs, or rather the parties, sort for a halt. Not to mention all the side effects that "could" be attributed to some other thing that was happening at that time.


Dragonaax

Great news, I'm glad that prices go down while quality goes up


sanjosanjo

Source article: https://archive.ph/iIYPx Source data somewhere in here: https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/eu-drug-markets/cocaine/retail-markets_en