Slope Chart

When several categories end near the same value, their end labels collide and the chart becomes unreadable. This visual spreads end labels apart and connects them to their lines with leader lines. On a small canvas the least important labels give way first, so labels are never drawn on top of each other.

Every line can carry a change annotation: % change, absolute change, both, percentage points (chosen automatically for percent measures), rank move, or % and rank together. When a period starts at or below zero, the chart shows the absolute change instead of a misleading percentage from a non-positive base.

A slope chart draws one line per category from the first period to the last, which makes the direction and steepness of each change easy to compare. A dumbbell puts a start marker and an end marker on one row per category and can be sorted by end value, start value, change, % change, name or data order, which reads well with long category names. Both views are part of the free tier.

A bump chart plots ranks instead of values. The visual computes the ranks for you (ties share a rank), draws smooth curves through every period and labels the rank moves, so the question "who overtook whom" answers itself. The bump view is part of the premium business review pack.

Lines are coloured as rising, falling or flat, and flat has its own colour and glyph. A dead band, for example plus or minus 2 percent, or a threshold in units, decides how much a value must move before it counts as a change, so small noise does not show up as a trend.

The Higher is better switch flips the good and bad colours for KPIs where a fall is good news: costs, defect rates, scrap. The glyphs keep showing the true direction, so the chart stays honest in high contrast mode and for readers who do not rely on colour.

With premium, the same visual follows the path through three or more periods, up to the latest 36 months, quarters or years, and writes a note under the chart when earlier periods are left out. Top or Bottom N focus picks the biggest movers, gainers or decliners by % change, absolute change, rank move or last value, and small multiples draw one slope per region, segment or plant on shared scales.

A story headline is written from your data: who led the rise, who fell furthest, how many rose, the total change and a new number one. An average benchmark line can colour each line by whether it ends above or below it, and indexed (first period = 100) and share-of-period scales make categories of different sizes comparable.