Trends in Disguise

Human longevity is changing; but at what rate? Insurance claims are increasing; but at what rate? Are the trends that we glean from data true or illusionary? The shocking fact is that true trends might be quite different from those that we actually see from visualized data. Indeed, in some situations the upward trends (e.g., inflation) may even look decreasing (e.g., deflation). In this paper, we discuss this 'trends in disguise' phenomenon in detail and offer a way for estimating true trends