That's pretty neat. I never thought of doing a graph that way. But what I'm looking for is just an indicator if "cost"
is rising or declining. Basically a positive or negative value. I only metioned plotting the data to demonstrate
my point. The indicator (number) I'm looking for would be the slope of the linear trend line of the data. And for
this application, the actual number isn't important, just whether it's positive or negative.


>Hi Joe. I don't know if this is what you'r looking for, but I gave it a shot.

SET TALK OFF
>CREATE TABLE trend_data (cost N(6))
>FOR i = 1 TO 100
>	APPEND BLANK
>	nRand = RAND()*100
>	REPLACE cost WITH nRand
>ENDFOR
>
>PUBLIC oForm
>oForm = CREAT([TrendForm])
>oForm.DRAWWIDTH = 2
>oForm.FORECOLOR = RGB(255,0,0)
>
>
>GO TOP
>xStart = RECNO() * 100
>FOR k = 1 TO 100
>	x1 = xStart
>	x2 = xStart + 4
>	y1 = trend_data.cost + 175
>	SKIP
>	y2 = trend_data.cost + 175
>	oForm.LINE(x1,y1,x2,y2)
>	xStart = xStart + 4
>ENDFOR
>
>oForm.DRAWWIDTH = 3
>oForm.FORECOLOR = RGB(0,0,255)
>oForm.LINE(70,80,70,400)
>oForm.LINE(70,400,550,400)
>
>oForm.SHOW
>
>DEFINE CLASS CostLable AS LABEL
>	BACKSTYLE = 0
>	CAPTION = [C O S T]
>	FONTBOLD = .T.
>	FONTSIZE = 14
>	HEIGHT = 88
>	LEFT = 30
>	TOP = 190
>	WIDTH = 15
>	WORDWRAP = .T.
>ENDDEFINE
>
>DEFINE CLASS TimeLable AS LABEL
>	BACKSTYLE = 0
>	CAPTION = [TIME]
>	FONTBOLD = .T.
>	FONTSIZE = 14
>	LEFT = 300
>	TOP = 430
>ENDDEFINE
>
>DEFINE CLASS TrendForm AS FORM
>	AUTOCENTER = .T.
>	BACKCOLOR = RGB(255,255,255)
>	BORDERSTYLE = 1
>	CAPTION = []
>	CLOSABLE = .F.
>	CONTROLBOX = .F.
>	HEIGHT = 480
>	MAXBUTTON = .F.
>	MINBUTTON = .F.
>	MOVABLE = .F.
>	WIDTH = 640
>	ADD OBJECT cost AS CostLable
>	ADD OBJECT TIME AS TimeLable
>	PROCEDURE CLICK
>	RELEASE THISFORM
>ENDPROC
>ENDDEFINE

Hope this helps.
>Dave

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>
>
>
>>What would be a good way to take a look at trends in data? Take a numeric field "cost" and
>>over time, (records) look at whether it's going up or down. It would basically be the slope of the linear trend line as
>>the data is plotted.