Singapore by the numbers

Each series on this page is charted from the dataset that produced it, not redrawn from a published image. That distinction matters more than it sounds: a chart traced from a picture inherits whatever the picture's author decided to smooth, crop or round, and there is no way to check it afterwards. Here the source is named under every chart and the aggregation is described.

The quota premiums are the result of the last bidding exercise in each month. A month with two exercises produces two clearing prices, and the later one is the figure usually quoted, so that is the one plotted. The housing series is a monthly median of every transaction on the record, a median rather than a mean, because a handful of very large sales pulls a mean somewhere no actual buyer went, and the transaction count is shown beside every town figure so a thin month is visible rather than hidden.

The temperature series is an anomaly, not a temperature. Its axis measures departure from a 1951 to 1980 reference period, which is why a value of one degree does not mean anywhere was one degree. A different reference period shifts every value by a constant and changes nothing about the shape. The longer explanation is on the climate topic page, and it is the single most misread axis label in circulation.