Bare Min - meaning

Hello.

I’ve spent some time on research and I still don’t get it: what does the two numbers Delta and Total mean?

  • Delta: “how much more you need to do …”
  • Total: “total you need to get …”

If I have a goal of reading 350 pages in a week, what does it mean if I see +50/80? Intuitively when I read 'how much more you need to do" I interprete in this case as ‘how much more pages you need to read’. But when I report new values, Delta and Total change in way I don’t understand.

(Nonetheless, Beeminder does its job!)
Thanks :]

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Hi @adamsko!
I guess that the confusion may be about what you decided to report. I took a peek at your reading-more graph, and it looks like you are reporting the number of pages you have read each day. If you want to report this value, you should have chosen a different type of goal - a “Do More” goal, where all the values auto-sum and build beautifully along the yellow brick road with your predefined slope. It looks like you have chosen an “Odometer” type of goal - and it is actually ideal for beeminding reading more, but it suggest that you enter the page where you stopped today, not the number of pages you read.
Basically, “do more” and “odometer” types of goals are quite alike, but in the first case you enter the “delta” for today, and it auto-sums with all the previous data, and in the second case you enter the “total” you have reached today, so it doesn’t auto-sum. I hope this helps a bit with the confusion.

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Big thanks @scarabaea for Your answer. It helps a lot: now even reading http://blog.beeminder.com/glossary/ is even more clear :relieved:. I got confused yesterday, because I didn’t know how much should I read to get back on Yellow Road.

I’ll recreate this goal and, bearing in mind Your explanation, and see what’s the difference :slight_smile:
Thanks!

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