I believe I read somewhere that you can populate one Beeminder goal with another. Is this correct? If so we can set up goals that have constraints on both sides of the road by having 2 goals: one “stay above” and another “stay below” (which uses data from the other).
Another use for this is to prevent non-reporting. If the “stay above” road has been set to trim the safety days automatically (premium feature), then if can be fixed to derail if no data is submitted. Plus, if gives me a visual reminder that I haven’t reported some of my “stay below” goals, which the current format doesn’t allow since not yet reporting is the same as doing great, and so the graph stays at the bottom of the goals page.
So, how do we do this “populate one with another” thing, and does anyone else see any use for this kind of double-limit on a single goal?
Ah, we haven’t supported that (populating one beeminder graph with data from another) for ages. It was an ad hoc way to experiment with things like multiple roads (like bare minimum vs ambitious roads) but we decided that the Second Great Beeminder Epiphany (the road dial and akrasia horizon) made all that moot.
Here’s our (notes on an) argument for not supporting minding both sides of the yellow brick road:
An argument could also be made for re-enabling the automatic population. Since the graphs in Beeminder are not zoomable, after a while graphs become unreadable and no longer visually motivating (“Stay on the yellow road!”. “The one that’s half-a-pixel wide?”).
Auto copying of data between graphs could be used to break longer term goals into more visually appealing shorter term ones. For example breaking a year long weight loss program in individual months.
That’s exactly why i stopped using Beeminder for my weight loss: too much data for a clear visualization.
I think the answer is zoomable (i.e interactive) graphs. I have been saying that for several years now - do the calculations in python, and the plotting in javascript!
In the android app, you can zoom on the graphs, its really nice. Making it more interactive where you can see what each point stood for would be great too.
