Pointy headed complaints trending

Darth Chaos is showing signs of Pointy Headedness. The subject matter? Complaints trending. Trending analyses are one of those things that I generate a couple of times a year - they are a most useful tool for identifying things that might be going wrong on a more serious level than we've really comprehended at any given point in time.

I trend complaints using data gathered from, as you would imagine, the complaints received by the company about our products. These are all about the problems that the customer has experienced whilst using our products. Mostly it's stuff that we can do nothing about, and whilst it would probably warrant a couple of really top notch investigations, such things are beyond the scope available to us. It's more the sort of thing that needs government or university attention.

So, what's the problem? Darth Chaos wants me to relate the complaints directly to the number of batches we have manufactured in the given time period. Unfortunately, the products we have sold in that time period cannot be directly correlated to the batches we have manufactured in that same time period. The data does not work that way. Just because we have manufactured a certain number of batches during that time period does not necessarily mean that all of those batches will be sold, and used, during that self-same time period. It just doesn't work like that.

We argued about this for a while, but ultimately I've given up in frustration, at least for now. She's apparently fallen in love with those manufacture figures, and they simply don't relate. I'm happy to relate the numbers to the sales figures - that is a direct correlation, and it works. It just doesn't work the other way around.

Unfortunately, the conclusion I'm coming to is that Darth Chaos doesn't really understand trending. She can see the point of it, and when it comes to providing what amounts to simple progress reports, then trending is fabulous. But she keeps wanting me to add all sorts of stuff to make it all look good (which is another gripe of mine, but I'm sure I've gone into that before somewhere or other.). Fine - I'll try to make it all positive. But please! Stop trying to make me put irrelevant information into it.

ETA: I went back after lunch for round 2, and I am pleased to report that I won. I managed to convince her that the numbers would be incomplete, and I don't have to put them in any more. I'll still have to do an overall trending report which will include those percentages, but she'll probably have forgotten about it by the end of the year.