Expand the Discussion


It is in our nature: we want to know more.

The SeeTheDollars application serves this nature by allowing the user to attach money flow diagrams to an existing one. By expanding the discussion beyond the information that a single money flow diagram provides, one learns more about an issue.

The design and implementation of this feature needs to be done carefully to avoid creating a big mess.

In the audio for the home page, I describe some questions I had after seeing the diagram on that page. I don’t use any of these questions here to demonstrate the use of the expand the discussion feature to answer them because, frankly, I don’t know the answers. Instead, I use a case where we all know the answers.

Let’s take a simple, and funny, example: an illustration of what happens to the dollars involved when Renée Zellweger buys a house from Garry Cooper.

Looking at this illustration, one may ask “where does the bank get the money to make the loan” or “where is she going to find the money to pay off her mortgage.”

The answer to the first question is a dollar path that ends at the “bank vault” image. The answer to the second question is a dollar path that ends at the “mortgage” image.

Click on the bold text on the left to see how the new dollar paths are added to the original one.

Another useful feature of SeeTheDollars is the color of the dollars. Colors underscore the behavior of the dollars and are used to remind you of that, because I believe it’s helpful and important. For example, when you owe money, the behavior of that money is totally different than the behavior of the money you invest. The money you owe has to be paid back to the last penny and with interest. The money you invest changes its value every second. In SeeTheDollars you can color the money any way you choose. On this page I show my own choice of colors.