Comment by tovej
6 days ago
It is not industry practice to actually give the sources then? Just list vague names in a short "Sources:Companies" note? I now see the inflation indication as well. Which is not on the y-axis label, but in the "Sources:"-note. I will concede that. But what the hell my guy, why is it down there.
If "financial analysis" is less rigid in sourcing requirements than grade school, what are you guys even doing. If you have the source, it's not very difficult to make a bibliography (or even write the year/publication with the author/publisher), and not doing so only serves to hinder the reader. If this is industry standard it means your entire industry is terrible at sourcing, does not want the reader to verify claims, or both.
And I've also definitely seen financial slide decks with actual sources cited. So I'm inclined to hope there are people in your industry who actually respect the reader's time.
Here's some more picks (and some more reasons you should list your sources): Your graphs based on surveys don't report error margins. You never list what a 100% is very precisely (what's the sample/population). In one graph, you don't label the y-axis at all (except for a 0 at the bottom)!
And finally, I was rude, yes. But I was only matching your energy. And I did show constraint there. I didn't make a veiled threat, did I?
You are surprised to discover how an entire industry you know nothing about does things. You conclude that everyone in that industry must be an idiot doing bad work.
This says far more about you than it does about me.
Yes, it says I have bare-minimum standards for how to cite references.
I never said I thought financial analysts are idiots. That's not a conclusion I made.
I gave a very reasonable reason: they want it to be more difficult to replicate the analysis. That makes sense if your goal is to make sure your work is profitable, rather than quality reporting and knowledge dissemination.
That would imply the people who set the standards (not everyone) is cynical and/or greedy. Not an idiot.
And still, presumably you are still allowed to add actual sources to financial analysis? You still failed the regular standard of good reporting on this. Your graphs also fail just regular data analysis sanity checks. There is, e.g., no thought given to whether it's even valid to compare data from two sources in one graph. You just do it.