The July caption contest had 19 entries and featured a cartoon of a diverse group of people staring at a time series plot. The plot of sales versus time shows a generally downward trend but with a single very large blip to a high value at a single time point.
The winning caption for the July contest was "It's always the same: just before the exam, book sales spike," written by Karsten Luebke from FOM University in Germany. The caption should prove helpful in discussing how context matters in thinking about trend and "Seasonal" patterns in time series.
Honorable mentions this month went to Jim Alloway from EMSQ Associates for his submission: "… and this is why we validate the data before plotting it" and to Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso for his entry "Fireworks sales skyrocket the first few days of July."