what is the difference between cummulative sum and cummulative users
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The difference between cumulative sum and cumulative users in Mixpanel is as follows: - Cumulative Sum: This refers to adding up the values of a metric (such as revenue, event counts, or property values) over time. For example, if you are tracking revenue, the cumulative sum will show the total revenue accumulated up to each point in time. In Mixpanel, you can enable this by selecting the "Cumulative" option in the analysis settings, which adds up the values of each point on the graph as it goes along, so the height of the line increases over time Docs: Analysis Settings.- Cumulative Users: This typically refers to the total number of unique users who have performed a specific event up to each point in time. For example, if you are tracking "Sign Up" events, cumulative users would show the total number of unique users who have signed up by each date, not just those who signed up on that specific day.Key Difference: - Cumulative sum aggregates numeric values (like revenue or event counts). - Cumulative users aggregates unique users over time.Both are useful for understanding growth, but one tracks totals of a value, while the other tracks totals of unique users.
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I'm getting different results when looking at cumulative sum and cumulative users. why?
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The difference in results between cumulative sum and cumulative users is expected because they measure fundamentally different things: - Cumulative sum adds up the values of each data point over time. For example, if you are tracking the total number of events, the cumulative sum will show the running total of all events that have occurred up to each point in time. This means if a single user performs an event multiple times, each occurrence is included in the sum Docs: Analysis Settings.- Cumulative users counts the total number of unique users who have performed the event up to each point in time. Each user is only counted once, no matter how many times they perform the event.Why are the results different? - If users perform the same event multiple times, the cumulative sum will always be equal to or greater than the cumulative users. - Cumulative sum reflects total activity, while cumulative users reflects total reach (unique individuals).This difference is especially noticeable for events that users can perform more than once. For example, if one user performs an event five times, the cumulative sum increases by five, but cumulative users only increases by one.For more details on how cumulative calculations work in Mixpanel, see the documentation on analysis settings Docs: Analysis Settings.
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what if i look at cumulative sum of event by unique user vs. total?
