Qualitative methods for conducting a primary assessment of the state of the economic system when making management decisions

The article is devoted to the improvement of the management decision-making methods based on a qualitative data analysis. It provides a justification for the need to introduce a quantitative indicator that can be used to measure the region of the time series concentration (pseudoattractor), i.e. the set of its close values, and describes the procedure for its construction. Classical statistical time series meters (the variation range and the indicator of variation) have a number of disadvantages that do not allow them to be used in their traditional capacity for the analysis of relational time series – series obtained as a result of dividing the values of one time series by the corresponding simultaneous values of another time series. The constructed meter is dimensionless, normalized, and invariant with respect to the division procedure. In addition, it is insensitive to changes in the length of the series if the values being added or removed are enclosed within the boundaries defined by local extremes (minimum and maximum). The constructed quantitative indicator is added to the method of delayed coordinates, which is a method of qualitative analysis of the behavior of time series. The combination of such tools is convenient for fast data analysis and does not require special mathematical training, which makes that approach accessible to managers.