Comparing currency devaluation with Python

As the old saying goes, "money makes the world go around". Sure enough, money is the easiest way to measure a country's economic health, or at least its purchasing power.

Data about purchasing power is publicly available at statista. We can use matplotlib to plot a line chart and compare the devaluation process of currencies.

For the euro the purchasing power data from 2000 to 2020 is:

y = [ 1.39, 1.36, 1.33, 1.3, 1.28, 1.25, 1.22, 1.2, 1.16, 1.15, 1.13, 1.1, 1.08, 1.06, 1.06, 1.06, 1.06, 1.04, 1.02, 1.01, 1]

The code below plots the devaluation of the euro:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

y = [ 1.39, 1.36, 1.33, 1.3, 1.28, 1.25, 1.22, 1.2, 1.16, 1.15, 1.13, 1.1, 1.08, 1.06, 1.06, 1.06, 1.06, 1.04, 1.02, 1.01, 1]
x = range(0,len(y)) 

plt.figure()
plt.plot(x,y)

plt.show()

For the dollar the devaluation is:

y = [ 1.51, 1.47, 1.45, 1.41, 1.38, 1.33, 1.29, 1.26, 1.21, 1.19, 1.16, 1.13, 1.12, 1.1, 1.1, 1.08, 1.06, 1.04, 1.02 ]

The numbers are not in the same range, so you need to normalize them. I will normalize against the maximum, not normalize against the sum. To normalize against the maximum you can use

norm = [float(i)/max(raw) for i in raw]

Ofcourse I add a legend to the plot to show the currency.
That gives us this plot:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

eur = [ 1.39, 1.36, 1.33, 1.3, 1.28, 1.25, 1.22, 1.2, 1.16, 1.15, 1.13, 1.1, 1.08, 1.06, 1.06, 1.06, 1.06, 1.04, 1.02]

usd = [ 1.51, 1.47, 1.45, 1.41, 1.38, 1.33, 1.29, 1.26, 1.21, 1.19, 1.16, 1.13, 1.12, 1.1, 1.1, 1.08, 1.06, 1.04, 1.02 ]

x = range(0,len(eur))

y_eur = [float(i)/max(eur) for i in eur]
y_usd = [float(i)/max(usd) for i in usd]

plt.figure()
plt.plot(x,y_eur)
plt.plot(x,y_usd)

plt.ylabel("Purchasing power")
plt.xlabel("Year")
plt.legend(['eur','usd'])
plt.show()

The trend is similar in both currencies. This program should work with any currency