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Our brains can easily interpret connections and patterns. Besides, we can easily distinguish between slopes of straight lines.
And it’s for this reason that seasoned data visualization experts use Slope Charts in their data stories. These charts are easy to read and understand. Besides, this makes them ideal if you want to communicate high-level insights quickly to a non-technical audience.
Creating a Slope Chart does not have to be a complex and time-consuming undertaking. In this blog, you’ll learn how to create a Slope Chart in Excel. You’ll also learn how you can use these charts to create compelling data stories.
The sensational strategies and tips we’ve rounded up for you are tested and proven. We use these tips to create data stories for our clients, meetings, and presentations.
We’re confident you’ll gain immense value from the blog.
Definition: Slope Charts are simple graphs that quickly and directly show transitions, changes over time, absolute values, and even rankings. Besides, they’re also called Slope Graphs.
You can use this chart to show the before and after story of variables in your data.
Slope Graphs can be useful when you have two time periods or points of comparison and want to show relative increases and decreases quickly across various categories between two data points.
The best way to explain the value of and use case for slope graphs is through a specific example.
Imagine you intend to communicate data from a 2019 road accidents report. To show the relative change in road accidents from 2000 to 2019, the slope might look something like the image shown above.
This chart pack in a lot of information. In addition to the absolute values (the points), the lines that connect them give you the visual increase or decrease in the rate of change (via the slope or direction).
Note: Slope Charts require immense patience to create because you can’t find ready-made templates in most visualization tools.
Whether a slope chart will work in your data story or not depends on the nature of your data. For instance, if many lines are overlapping, your chart will lose effectiveness. And this is due to clutter.
However, you can overcome the above challenge to some degree by highlighting a single line category that has either increased or decreased over time.
Edward Tufte first used the Slope Charts in his book-The Visual Display of Quantitative Information– to describe the hierarchy of countries between 1970 and 1979.
A Slope Chart has identical features as other graphs, such as the Line Chart. Let’s take a quick look at these features.
Data is the most significant part of making this chart for your story. Essentially, you need a substantial amount of data before you decide to use this chart for your visualization.
You need a tool that’s easy to use to plot this chart for your data story. There are a plethora of tools for data visualization, such as Excel.
Remember, we naturally read starting from the left. Besides, it makes sense to label the axes (on the left side) to guide your audience towards the meaning and context of your insights.
The legend may be the colors used or is a side section of the chart that gives a short text description of each series. Use a legend to help your audience understand the charted data.
A title is the big idea you want to communicate to your audiences. A title that compels the audience to pay attention and take the recommended action should convey what’s at stake.
For instance, ‘Our Sales have declined by 65% in the last 7 years. And at this rate, we won’t be in business in the next 2 financial years.
And this brings us to the benefits of these charts.
This is one of the easiest charts to read and interpret. Essentially, your audience will not struggle to understand the key insights. Besides, it’s incredibly easy to draw a slope chart if you use the right visualization tool.
With a Slope Chart, you don’t need much customization to highlight key insights. Again, it depends on the tool you’re using for the exercise.
Change is around us. Change in business is critical because it can drive profits or result in monetary loss. So you need the best chart in your data story to help persuade the management. The best chart to visualize change over time in your data is the Slope Chart.
Using this chart, it can help you can easily forecast the results of data that are yet to be collected.
So how can you tell a story using this visualization?
Let’s talk about Excel because it’s the tool most of us know since childhood. This tool has been there for decades. Besides, it has a user interface that’s incredibly friendly even to non-technical users. It’s safe to say that Excel is a friend to a massive chunk of people who work with data. We mean, it’s the go-to tool if you want to visualize data quickly and affordably.
So how can you create a Slope Chart in Excel?
Let’s visualize the data below using the Slope Chart in Excel spreadsheet.
Let’s delve into our Excel without wasting time.
Now we’re starting to get somewhere.
Note: We’ve not even formatted this chart and it’s already starting to tell us some key stories about Product D (yellow line) and Product E (light blue line).
Creating Slope Chart in Excel is incredibly time-consuming if you give it proper formatting.
So what’s the best tool that comes loaded with pre-existing templates for a slope chart?
Keep reading because you don’t want to miss the juicy part that’s coming next.
The solution is not to ditch your beloved Excel. No, we’re not advocating you to do away with the spreadsheet tool you’ve probably known since childhood.
You just need to supercharge it with a third-party add-in to make it a reliable partner for data visualization.
Microsoft knew very well it’s impossible to cater to all the data visualization needs you may have. And that’s why they came up with an app store where you can access third-party add-ins to get various specialized visualization tasks done with ease.
Well, there’s a reliable and incredibly easy-to-use add-in called ChartExpo. And it comes jam-packed with Slope Chart templates and other 80-plus charts.
ChartExpo is a cloud-hosted add-in that transforms your Excel spreadsheet app into a highly responsive data visualization tool.
Wait! That’s not all.
This highly affordable data visualization tool comes with over 50 chart templates to grant you a broader choice of visuals to select. With ChartExpo, you don’t need to know programming or coding. Yes, it’s that easy peasy to use.
When you’re curating a data story, feel confident you have a reliable data visualization buddy on your side. ChartExpo provides you unlimited freedom to customize your Slope Chart to align with your data story.
Remember, you can highlight the key insights you want your audience to take in with ease. You just need a few mouse clicks to access a Slope Chart for Excel that fits seamlessly within your data narrative.
Let’s head to the meaty part of the blog: the section where you get to practice what you’ve learned.
Follow the simple steps below in preparation for the next section.
ChartExpo offers immersive charts, which can make a massive difference in the way data visualizations impact your decision making.
To Get Started with ChartExpo for Excel add-In, follow the Simple and Easy Steps Below.
Imagine you run a Google Ad campaign, and you want to compare traffic interaction (clicks) by users from mobile with respect to various geographical locations.
Essentially, you’ll be comparing performance between the previous versus current period.
Let’s use the tabular data below for our scenario
| Period | State | Clicks |
| Previous | Chicago, Illinois, US | 14 |
| Previous | Dallas, Texas, US | 7 |
| Previous | Houston, Texas, US | 12 |
| Previous | Austin, Texas, US | 14 |
| Previous | Albany, New York, US | 31 |
| Previous | Trenton, New Jersey, US | 24 |
| Previous | Newark, New Jersey, US | 22 |
| Previous | Helena, Montana, US | 8 |
| Previous | San Antonio, Texas, US | 7 |
| Current | Chicago, Illinois, US | 21 |
| Current | Dallas, Texas, US | 27 |
| Current | Houston, Texas, US | 30 |
| Current | Austin, Texas, US | 69 |
| Current | Albany, New York, US | 21 |
| Current | Trenton, New Jersey, US | 34 |
| Current | Newark, New Jersey, US | 21 |
| Current | Helena, Montana, US | 21 |
| Current | San Antonio, Texas, US | 28 |
Now put the data in Excel and select your relevant chart that is slope chart from the list.
Make sure you select all the columns on which data need to be drawn and click on “Create Chart From Selection” Button as follow.
Your slop chart is ready to present your clicks data.
And this brings us to the next section, where you’ll learn how to interpret the chart.
Let’s take a basic math detour.
Generally, a slope is a measure of the steepness of a straight line when plotted on a pair of coordinate axes [x, y].
Letter m will indicate the amount that increases or decreases the dependent variable y when the independent variable x increases by one unit. And is represented by the equation y = mx + b,
There is a wide range of real-world processes, phenomena, scenarios, and systems modeled using straight lines. And naturally, slope charts are strategically positioned to tell the associated story.
A slope chart comprises two parallel vertical axes that indicate the same type of categorical variable with the same units of measurement.
While there is no horizontal axis, the distance between the vertical axes indicates an ordinal scale or a time interval. The numerical values of each category are indicated with points on each vertical axis and linked by a straight line or a curve.
The slopes of these lines or curves reveal the changes in absolute or relative values over time for each category. The information can also be coded using lines of different colors or different thicknesses .
So when should you deploy these charts?
Let’s head to the best practices section recommended by the pioneer of Slope Charts: Prof. Edward Tufte.
Remember, knowing this will help you make decisions about scaling and labeling.
Slope charts are simple graphs that quickly and directly show transitions, changes over time, absolute values, and rankings.
This chart can be useful when you have two time periods or points of comparison and want to quickly show relative increases or decreases across various categories between the two data points.
A slope chart is useful when you have two time periods or points of comparison and want to quickly show relative increases or decreases across various categories between the two data points. You can use it to visualize a wider range of data in business and other areas.
According to Prof. Edward Tufte, the pioneer of these charts:
A Slope Chart is one of the graphs that are easy to read and interpret, especially among non-technical audiences.
So you can use this visualization to create data stories that are irresistible for your audience irrespective of their position in the corporate power hierarchy.
Creating a slope chart in Excel does not have to be overwhelming or time consuming. Yes, if you’ve just landed here, please read the rest of the blog to gain invaluable and thought-provoking tips regarding data storytelling using Slope Charts.
We’ve compiled complex and time-consuming steps of creating a Slope Chart in Excel just to prove there’s a better alternative. An alternative that can save an immense amount of time and still create visualizations that make your data story compelling.
What’s the time-saving alternative? Use ChartExpo library.
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