Monday, November 10, 2008

Market Share Changes - Peltier

Jon Peltier passes on a challenge to improve a stacked bar chart.

The usual problem is that the bar chart only lines up on the first segment.
So why not line up all the segments?
This chart was done in Excel with blank series to line up the centerlines. (It is more straightforward in R.)



It is true that it isn't obvious from this chart that the five competitors shares add to 100%, but that is also true for most of Jon's alternatives.

Note that this also works in black & white / when xeroxed.

I call it an exploded bar chart, but only because I don't what its real name is.


UPDATE:
Jon comments that the changes are less obvious when they are split top and bottom. Well one can line up the baselines instead. It becomes a panel of bar charts.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting approach. The two products for each competitor are lined up, so they can be compared. The problem is that comparisons between competitors are still difficult. The magnitude of the change loses resolution as well, because the change is split between top and bottom of each floating bar.

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