"How to Make a Website" was retired on March 24, 2020. You are now viewing the recommended replacement.
Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Well done!
You have completed Data Visualization with Excel!
You have completed Data Visualization with Excel!
Preview
Learn how to create a line chart, and when it's good to use them.
Example Excel Spreadsheet
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
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
0:17
different store locations, or profit from
different products over a period of time.
0:21
Again, line charts are fantastic for
0:29
comparing different items
of similar data over time.
0:32
So let's create a line chart with
the gym membership data in front of us.
0:37
First, I'm going to select
all the data I wanna chart.
0:43
And then I'm going to use my
keyboard shortcut, Alt + N, and
0:49
the line chart short cut is N,
so I'll press N again.
0:53
2-D line, correct, and there we are.
0:57
You can see, the line chart allows us to
quickly see the story of the gym business,
1:03
because we can see the relative size
of different locations to each other.
1:09
And how their membership fluctuates
over the course of the year.
1:14
So, I'm going to make
this a little bigger.
1:20
And I'm actually going to move
this chart to its new sheet.
1:24
I'm gonna call it GymMembers.
1:28
So, for example, the Burnside and
1:35
Southeast locations
are the biggest in the network.
1:38
Up here, Southeast is the green line.
1:43
Burnside is this yellow line.
1:47
We see that North 2 started out
as the smallest location and
1:51
grew quickly over the year.
1:56
Maybe this is a new location.
1:59
Also, for pretty much all locations,
2:01
the membership declines over the course
of the year, which could be normal.
2:04
Lots of people start off the year with
their New Years resolutions, and it makes
2:09
sense that we would see higher membership
in the beginning of the year as a result.
2:14
This is called seasonality, in business,
certain periods of the year are gonna be
2:18
higher demand or make up a larger
portion of your revenue for the year.
2:23
Think of retail companies and
2:29
how important the Christmas
holidays are to them.
2:30
Or what about an ice cream company?
2:33
We'd expect to see much higher sales in
the warm summer months than in the winter.
2:35
Let's get back to the gym business.
2:41
We can see some of the locations are
having larger declines than the others.
2:43
Maybe North, which is the gray line,
2:48
is declining because North 2 is
taking away some of their members.
2:52
Something known as cannibalization,
in business.
2:56
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.
3:05
Yikes, that doesn't make
the story clearer at all.
3:16
So using a line chart is
preferable when charting
3:21
multiple series of data over time.
3:26
The story is much clearer.
3:29
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up