Who to see this week.

What is sample data and what is simulated

• Sample invoices. Months 13–24 (September 2025 to August 2026) are Meridian Sample Supply’s twelve months of invoices: merchandise lines by product line, per customer, rep and branch. Freight and small-order charges are left out. Meridian and every customer are fictional.
• Simulated prior year. The sample holds only twelve months, so months 1–12 (September 2024 to August 2025) come from a seeded generator: each account’s current year × a random trend factor (log-normal, σ 0.24), most of the change in one product line, spread over the months with seasonal noise.
• Simulated stops and starts. No account in the sample stopped ordering or just started, so the generator also leaves out the invoices after a seeded stop date for 6 accounts and before a seeded start date for 5. One of the stopped accounts orders so rarely that the rules call it slipping, not gone quiet: the rules read the data, not the generator.
• Drawn map. The region, roads, river and branch positions are invented, and every account’s position is a seeded point in its branch’s part of the region. No map service, no real geography, no addresses.
• The 72 accounts are Meridian’s biggest by twelve-month sales. Peers come from all of its customers.