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Learn how to create a line chart, and when it's good to use them.
Example Excel Spreadsheet
Let's talk about line charts.
0:00
They are fantastic for
comparing different items or
0:02
sources of similar data
over a period of time.
0:06
Here, we are looking at a spreadsheet
with membership data for
0:10
a fictional gym business.
0:15
But, we could also think of this
as looking at total revenue for
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different store locations, or profit from
different products over a period of time.
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Again, line charts are fantastic for
0:29
comparing different items
of similar data over time.
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So let's create a line chart with
the gym membership data in front of us.
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First, I'm going to select
all the data I wanna chart.
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And then I'm going to use my
keyboard shortcut, Alt + N, and
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the line chart short cut is N,
so I'll press N again.
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2-D line, correct, and there we are.
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You can see, the line chart allows us to
quickly see the story of the gym business,
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because we can see the relative size
of different locations to each other.
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And how their membership fluctuates
over the course of the year.
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So, I'm going to make
this a little bigger.
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And I'm actually going to move
this chart to its new sheet.
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I'm gonna call it GymMembers.
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So, for example, the Burnside and
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Southeast locations
are the biggest in the network.
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Up here, Southeast is the green line.
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Burnside is this yellow line.
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We see that North 2 started out
as the smallest location and
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grew quickly over the year.
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Maybe this is a new location.
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Also, for pretty much all locations,
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the membership declines over the course
of the year, which could be normal.
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Lots of people start off the year with
their New Years resolutions, and it makes
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sense that we would see higher membership
in the beginning of the year as a result.
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This is called seasonality, in business,
certain periods of the year are gonna be
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higher demand or make up a larger
portion of your revenue for the year.
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Think of retail companies and
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how important the Christmas
holidays are to them.
2:30
Or what about an ice cream company?
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We'd expect to see much higher sales in
the warm summer months than in the winter.
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Let's get back to the gym business.
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We can see some of the locations are
having larger declines than the others.
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Maybe North, which is the gray line,
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is declining because North 2 is
taking away some of their members.
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Something known as cannibalization,
in business.
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That is taking away from
your existing business or
3:00
products by launching new products or
locations.
3:02
Let's look at this same
chart in column form.
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Yikes, that doesn't make
the story clearer at all.
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So using a line chart is
preferable when charting
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multiple series of data over time.
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The story is much clearer.
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