Lexis Diagram

The Lexis diagram is a geometric bookkeeping device that places every demographic event in a two-dimensional grid of age against calendar time, so that each person's life traces a diagonal line and each cohort fans out as a band of parallel lifelines. Named after the German statistician Wilhelm Lexis, it is the foundational drawing of formal demography: it makes the otherwise confusing relationship between age, period, and birth cohort visible, and it tells the analyst exactly which deaths, births, and person-years belong together when a rate is computed.