A Slope Chart shows a change of values from one period or status to another. For example, here is a Slope Chart demonstrating the change in sales rank for each state in the South region from 2016 to 2017:
Here are some features and techniques used to create the preceding Slope Chart:
- The table calculation Rank(Sum(Sales)) is computed by (addressed by) State, meaning that each state is ranked within the partition of a single Year.
- Grid Lines and Zero Lines for Rows have been set to None.
- The axis has been reversed (right-click the axis and select Edit, then check the option to reverse). This allows rank #1 to appear at the top and lower ranks to appear in descending order.
- The axis has been hidden (right-click the axis and uncheck Show Header).
- Labels have been edited (by clicking on Label) to show on both ends of the line, to center vertically, and to position the rank number next to the state name.
- The Year column headers have been moved from the bottom of the view to the top (from the top menu, select Analysis | TableLayout | Advanced and uncheck the option to show the innermost level at the bottom).
- A data highlighter has been added (using the dropdown on the State field in the view, select Show Highlighter) to give the end user the ability to highlight one or more states.
Data highlighters give the user the ability to highlight marks in a view by selecting values from the drop-down list or by typing (any match on any part of a value will highlight the mark; so, for example, typing Carolina would highlight North Carolina and South Carolina in the preceding view). Data highlighters can be shown for any field you use as discrete (blue) in the view and will function across multiple views in a dashboard as long as that same field is used in those views.
Slope Charts can use absolute values (for example, the actual values of Sales) or relative values (for example, the rank of Sales, as shown in this example). If you were to show more than 2 years to observe the change in rankings over multiple periods of time, the resulting visualization might be called a Bump Chart, like this:
