Basket

the headline figure is a basket that belongs to no actual household.

drag your own spending weights and watch your inflation split away from the headline number

The official inflation figure is a weighted average of one fixed basket: a bit over a third food, a tenth housing, and so on down to a sliver of data and phone. Nobody actually spends in exactly those proportions. A farmer who spends half of every rupee on food is living inside food inflation almost entirely, whatever the headline says; a salaried professional spending a quarter on food and a fifth on housing feels a different number from the same eight prices. The headline is not wrong, but it is an average of a household that does not exist, and the gap between it and your own basket is real money.

Concepts: statistics, measurement.

An interactive you play with one thumb, on Wundr.