# Question about graphs - cumulative vs daily

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/question-about-graphs-cumulative-vs-daily/3414>\
**Category:** Newbee\
**Created:** [August 8, 2017, 12:54pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/question-about-graphs-cumulative-vs-daily/3414 "2017-08-08T12:54:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![emartin74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/85e7bf/32.png) [@emartin74](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/emartin74)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2017, 12:54pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/question-about-graphs-cumulative-vs-daily/3414/1 "2017-08-08T12:54:23Z")

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Is there a way to show data as an amount per day instead of a cumulative amount over time? In other words could we see a bar graph of the amount we track per day, rather than a line graph showing the amount we track of something over time? Does that make any sense? LOL.

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**Author:** ![philip](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/philip/32/1505_2.png) [@philip](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/philip)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2017, 4:42pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/question-about-graphs-cumulative-vs-daily/3414/2 "2017-08-08T16:42:50Z")

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The short answer is ‘no’, and there are good reasons why cumulative is the right choice for goals.  
_(there was an excellent blog post about this, does anybody remember where it is? paging @dreev!)_

But I too sometimes want to easily see the daily pattern of data.

One workaround: on the data tab of your goal, near the bottom you can download a csv of your data, open it in Excel and create whatever graphs make sense.

One of my hopes for client-side graphs (whenever that becomes possible) is that we’ll then be able to support toggling between the current cumulative graph and a daily histogram.

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**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2017, 7:53pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/question-about-graphs-cumulative-vs-daily/3414/3 "2017-08-08T19:53:01Z")

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That’s @grayson’s post, [Baby Got Bonus](http://www.graysonbraymorris.com/baby-got-bonus/)!

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**Author:** ![emartin74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/85e7bf/32.png) [@emartin74](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/emartin74)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2017, 8:28pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/question-about-graphs-cumulative-vs-daily/3414/4 "2017-08-08T20:28:47Z")

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Interesting post, thank you for the information. At Philip’s suggestion, I  
did download the data for the goal I want to keep track of the values by  
day for.