Forum Discussion
Visualizing series with different X-axis on the same chart
Hi,
my question is not really technical, but a visualizing problem. I have a report containing many KPIs, and one is a hard nut to crack for me.
Each quarter closing month (3, 6, 9, 12th month) I receive 3 data (all in percentages):
- an actual for the closed quarter
- an estimate for the next quarter
- an estimate for the full year
Each non-quarter closing month (1, 2, 4, ..., 11th month) I receive 2:
- an estimate for the current quarter
- an estimate for the full year
Things I have to visualize:
- all the quarter actual results
- an estimate for the current, non-closed quarter
- two estimates for the full year, the latest and the previous month's
The latest data I have at the moment is September (P09), so at this point I'd like to visualize Q1, Q2, Q3 actual, Q4 estimate, and P08, P09 full year estimate.
You can see my current state on the picture below.
I achieved this by 2 different chart, a Clustered Column and a Line chart, the Clustered Column contains all the Quarterly data, the Line chart contains the Monthly full year estimate data. I have many problems with this. The two value for the Line are P08 and P09 and the X-axis means the time the prediction was made, while for the Column chart the meaning of the X-axis is the time we are predicting, so I find this very confusing, but I'm yet to find a better solution. Also I'm not sure where to put the line on the X-axis.
(All the numbers are percentages, thus the full year estimate and actuals can share a Y-axis. Of course if these were absolute values, then it wouldn't make any sense as the full year would be a much higher value.)
Moving the quarterly and monthly values to two different charts isn't working, because I wouldn't use a whole chart for just one line with 2 values.
Just to show you another KPI, where the actuals are monthly values hence the X-axis can be shared and the same approach works just fine:
The series I have to visualize is fixed, but I'm open to any kind of visualization, if you have a better idea.
Thank you.