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I think I'm missing something here. How does looking at transaction history as a directed graph help anything? Is it an improvement on the centuries-old "double

I think I'm missing something here. How does looking at transaction history as a directed graph help anything? Is it an improvement on the centuries-old "double-entry" practice? It seems to barely work with the toy example of couple transactions - imagine what the graph would look like with dozens or hundreds of edges between pairs of nodes. What use would there be for the typical algorithms that work with graphs? This feels a bit like using pliers as a hammer. Sure, you can, I guess -- but why?

brvsft 3y ago
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weego 3y ago
The article feels like a similar insight to the founding ideas of cryptocurrencies. Engineers stumbling on foundational principles baked into other fields that software happens to be replicating.
inopinatus 3y ago
It’s hare-brained. The article is over-egging the pudding. They haven’t established a justification, and the author’s claim that this visualisation helped them arrive at a clearer understanding is rather undermined by the category errors they make in the course of trying to geeksplain D.E. from first principles. What’s more they’ve represented only one very simple transaction. God knows how they’re going to gain from a graph-based visualisation of something more abstract e.g. dissimilar tax and book depreciation, adjustments for gains/losses on foreign exchange, allocation of franked dividends, PAYG, holding of amounts in trust for other parties, partial recognition of deferred revenue and so forth.
zamubafoo 3y ago
I can see what you are saying, but I think it helps in two ways: 1. it is another way to conceptualize an idea. For most purposes this might not be relevant, but who knows where a hard accounting problem might be resolved through the application of graph theory (or the inverse!). 2. it is another way to visualize flows. Not everyone is financially literate or numerically inclined, so instead of handing them a table of columns of numbers and having them reason about the flows numerically, it lets you represent the flows spatially which maybe easier. After all, not all tools are for professionals. Additionally, while the cumulative history in one graph might be much, simply adding filters based on transaction date might provide non-obvious insight that other visualizations miss. I can see this probably being even more helpful by cross referencing other information such as location.
- btbuildem 3y ago
  I'm a big fan of looking at usual problems through unusual lenses - while something normally easy is contrived, the different perspective might make a hard problem much more easily grokked. I wish OP included a working project that lets one ingest a ledger, producing a graph. Perhaps this graph view might be used for "forensic" purposes, where a one-line entry buried deep would stand out as an odd node? Still a hard sell with only one very basic example provided -- especially in a domain that's been around forever and where any advantage is critical. The DE ledger seems like a basic, simple tool, iterated into perfection over millennia. You'd think you could improve it, but good luck if you try.

brvsft 3y ago

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deleted 3y ago

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weego 3y ago

The article feels like a similar insight to the founding ideas of cryptocurrencies. Engineers stumbling on foundational principles baked into other fields that software happens to be replicating.

inopinatus 3y ago

It’s hare-brained. The article is over-egging the pudding. They haven’t established a justification, and the author’s claim that this visualisation helped them arrive at a clearer understanding is rather undermined by the category errors they make in the course of trying to geeksplain D.E. from first principles. What’s more they’ve represented only one very simple transaction. God knows how they’re going to gain from a graph-based visualisation of something more abstract e.g. dissimilar tax and book depreciation, adjustments for gains/losses on foreign exchange, allocation of franked dividends, PAYG, holding of amounts in trust for other parties, partial recognition of deferred revenue and so forth.

zamubafoo 3y ago

I can see what you are saying, but I think it helps in two ways: 1. it is another way to conceptualize an idea. For most purposes this might not be relevant, but who knows where a hard accounting problem might be resolved through the application of graph theory (or the inverse!). 2. it is another way to visualize flows. Not everyone is financially literate or numerically inclined, so instead of handing them a table of columns of numbers and having them reason about the flows numerically, it lets you represent the flows spatially which maybe easier. After all, not all tools are for professionals. Additionally, while the cumulative history in one graph might be much, simply adding filters based on transaction date might provide non-obvious insight that other visualizations miss. I can see this probably being even more helpful by cross referencing other information such as location.

btbuildem 3y ago
I'm a big fan of looking at usual problems through unusual lenses - while something normally easy is contrived, the different perspective might make a hard problem much more easily grokked. I wish OP included a working project that lets one ingest a ledger, producing a graph. Perhaps this graph view might be used for "forensic" purposes, where a one-line entry buried deep would stand out as an odd node? Still a hard sell with only one very basic example provided -- especially in a domain that's been around forever and where any advantage is critical. The DE ledger seems like a basic, simple tool, iterated into perfection over millennia. You'd think you could improve it, but good luck if you try.