Bread statistics

This prompted by this morning's bread making activities.

The snap above being taken from the Excel record of baking bread from January 2011, a period heading towards fifteen years.

I read this graph to say that the interval between batches is slowly but steadily increasing, suggesting decreasing consumption as I get older.

Seemingly simple enough, but there are, nevertheless, some confounds.

First, in the early days, the weight of batches was lower, only settling down to the present 5lbs 12oz in 2015 or so. Checking this would require my writing a little routine to convert pounds and ounces in text form to decimal numbers. Which may not happen soon.

Second, holidays and other breaks in the normal course of events. At least these are mostly visible as spikes.

Third, consumption of my bread will, on occasion, be depressed by that of bought bread, usually white bread. This may vary in a systematic way.

Fourth, a presentational issue. The horizontal axis is linear in the number of batches but not in time. An issue which would be mitigated by showing date as well as serial number - but a mitigation which is beyond my rough and ready familiarity with Excel graphs. Short of the old-fashioned procedure of tacking on dates by hand. Possibly even writing them by hand. A proceeding which might, perhaps unfairly, give the impression of careless or shoddy work.

But, for the present, I still hold out for decreasing consumption, possibly correlated with decreasing exercise.

PS 1: this after the bread has gone into the proving bin for its second rise. Not sure that it is an improvement: is the untidy appearance - this despite the absence of handwriting - worth the added value?

PS 2: readers who are bakers may be interested to know that today's batch of bread, No.750, went into first rise weighing 5lbs 13oz and weighed out (hot) at 2lbs 8oz and 2lbs 8½oz - with 12½oz of water blowing off in one way or another.