See the Difference with Slopegraphs

Recently, I've been doing some practice with chart types I haven't used in awhile, so when I saw Cole Knaflic's Storytelling with Data Challenge this month, I decided to give it a go. The challenge for June was to create a slopegraph. While the data I have been working with recently hasn't been suited for a slopegraph, I do think they are a nice way to see the difference.

Here's my original table of data that I made up. 

If my goal is to figure out which jewelry division increased the most or had a negative change, I need to do calculations in my head to get the answer I'm looking for. That takes precious time that could be spent making the decision or implementing actions.  

This data is perfectly suited for the a slopegraph because I'm measuring two periods, so I should be able to see the change clearly.   

Here are two versions of this data visualization, one with only the visualization and one with a small amount of text to inform the reader about a decision on where to focus. 

  I can now clearly see:

• Fashion jewelry continues to be the category people spend their money on.
• Craft and fine jewelry had the biggest increases of 43 and 25%, respectively. 
• Art and academic jewelry has not faired so well, with declines in YoY sales. 

A little narrative can go a long way in facilitating or communicating decisions.

For this example, I used Tableau software and have provided the completely fictional data below if you would like to use it.  

slopgraph_data_example.csv
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File Type:	csv

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