On Sep 24, 12:20 am, "MartinW" wrote:
Sounds like you are losing your self in the processes and
confusing your goals.

Y'got that right!

I usually need a visual representation
to sort out what I'm getting and what I actually want.

Certainly! But sometimes, especially with math problems, it is
additionally helpful to create "thought experiments" and imagine the
results.

Volatility is a measure of sequential variability -- for example, year
after year after year results. I inadvertently eliminated that
sequential factor when I looked at the std dev of all year-over-year
results.

On the other hand, the std dev of year-over-year results might be good
(dare I say better?) for the purpose of modeling market performance,
if we accept the idea that market behavior is essentially Brownian
motion. (Not everyone agrees with that.)

In this situation I would plot all of my data on an XY Scatter
chart [...]. I plot them
as yearly series and monthly series of each maybe even daily
in some cases, also play around with some trendlines some
where in all this trial and error process I usually spot
a relationship in the data that is relevant to what I am
trying to achieve.

Absolutely! I do that as well. But even if we compare two trendlines
over an appropriate time horizon and we see that one is steeper upward
than the other, we still want a measure of volatility in order to
assess risk.