FRED is all about statistics, and the FRED Blog is all about discussing them. It’s early January, so we’ll take some time for introspection and setting new goals based on statistics from this past year.

The list below shows the FRED Blog posts from 2021 that our users have read the most. Unlike other top lists, we waited until the year was completely over to avoid subsequent revisions (for which we’d need to launch the ALFRED Blog).

Here are the most-viewed posts written in 2021:

1. What’s behind the recent surge in the M1 money supply?
2. Savings are now more liquid and part of “M1 money”
3. Turkey or Tofurkey?
4. No taper tantrum this time?
5. The jump in used car prices

Obviously, our readers have been intrigued by the surge in M1, which was discussed early in the year. We figure that posts from later in the year haven’t had a fair chance to bubble up, as they’ve been visible and available for a shorter time for classroom use, journalism, or sharing among friends. Hence, it also makes sense to look at which posts from all years were read the most in 2021:

1. What’s behind the recent surge in the M1 money supply?
2. The price and weight of a bar of gold
3. How to calculate the term premium
4. Incomes determine house prices
5. Savings are now more liquid and part of “M1 money”

How this graph was created: Click the link for our top blog post to get the instructions.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

It’s 2022, friends. So if you have a wall or desk calendar, it’s time to swap it out. FRED has some price data about calendars—specifically, the producer price index (PPI) for calendars, yearbooks, and some other related but unspecified publications. This data series measures how much the producers of these goods are paid for each unit.

In the FRED graph above, it looks like this industry was able to achieve steadily increasing prices until 2008, when prices remained stuck and even dropped 20% in April 2014. Starting in 2018, prices get a bit wild. Is this an industry in upheaval? Certainly, smart phones and watches have provided new competition to paper calendars.

FRED also has a calendar, which tracks data releases. But like everything in FRED, this calendar is free.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “calendar.” That’s it.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

The FRED Blog occasionally refers to ALFRED, the archive of historical versions (or “vintages”) of FRED data that recently turned 15. It has been featured in posts about recurring revisions of employment data. Today we call upon ALFRED to illustrate a different type of data revision: one where the methodology for calculating the data changes.

Here’s an analogy: Imagine preparing a pitcher of fresh lemonade. The recipe that you follow is the methodology; the lemons are the information available to you at the time you mix all the ingredients; and the delicious lemonade is the final product of your work, the data.

Some data, such as gross domestic product and nonfarm employment, are revised up to three times because it takes time and effort to assemble economic information and not all of it is immediately available. These lemons have uneven sizes and yield different amounts of juice.

The ALFRED graph above, though, shows a change in data methodology. The organization reporting the number of active real estate listings, Realtor.com, has changed its process to account for real estate listings. The recipe has changed: The dashed blue line shows the data calculated with the old methodology, and the solid red line shows the data calculated with the new methodology.

Revising the procedure used to report this metric of the housing inventory resulted in decreases of up to 5.7% in the count of single-family and condo/townhome homes listed for sale. To learn more about the data themselves, read the notes below every FRED or ALFRED graph. Those notes are updated when the methodology used by the source changes.

How this graph was created: Search ALFRED for “Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in the United States.” By default, ALFRED shows a graph with two sets of bars: the most recent vintage and the prior vintage. To change the graph type and style of the series use the “Format” panel.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.