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Developing the Kronos Retail Labor Index with Mathematica

In recent years, predicting the health of the U.S. economy has become more complicated than ever. Economists are constantly on the lookout for new ways to predict the economy’s future path, but discovering significant new economic indicators has become more difficult.

The Kronos Retail Labor Index is an exciting new leading economic indicator of the overall health of the U.S. economy. Dr. Robert Yerex, chief economist at Kronos, used Mathematica exclusively in its development and monthly production.

Path of the U.S. Economy

Path of the U.S. Economy: 2006–2010 (Kronos Data)
The path of the graph shows the overall trajectory of the Kronos Retail Labor Index. The color of the line is coded to visually represent increases in the U.S. unemployment rate (black represents a low unemployment rate and red represents a high rate), and the width of the line indicates relative changes in employee retention.
Source: Kronos Retail Labor Index, July 2010 Release

 

You can find more on the Kronos Retail Labor Index development, and stories from other Mathematica users, in our User Experiences pages.

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4 comments

  1. Dear Prof.
    I come from China, my major is theory physics, so the Mathematica is very useful.
    Recently, i meet a small question. All the captions (including the axis labels) for 3D figs in Mathematica are horizontal. How to change captions to be parallel to the axis?

    Reply
    • According to Technical Support, there is no easy way to do this. Basically, you would need to treat the labels as 3D objects and combine them with the plot.

      The orientation is relative to the display (not the graphic) and can be shifted using Rotate. For example, Rotate[“x”,90 Degree] would make the label vertical. However, as you rotate the graphic, the label would remain vertical even as the axes shifted to horizontal.

      Note: If you do use 3D text, the resulting display may not be useful as the labels could easily become obscured by the graphic, turning upside down or being otherwise unreadable.

      Thank you for your question,
      Wolfram Research Blog Team

      Reply
  2. The Kronos Retail Labor Index comes out of the Kronos desire to be THE go to TLM company in retail. Makes sense as it’s a HUGE market. I love the fact that they are spending on Research such as this and hope that they continue spending on the Development side of the house to further the applications.

    Bryan deSilva
    Improvizations
    ————————
    Kronos Blog @ http://www.improvizations.com/kronosblog/

    Reply
  3. Robert Yerex said he was happy to send the vizualisation code to achieve the multidimensional output – I cannot find where to source it. Can you please help?

    Reply