Index Charts, Part 2: Chopping Up and Folding the Time Axis

Index Charts that transform the vertical axis are pretty common, but what about indexing on the time axis? That's actually done quite a bit too, even though it's not always obvious. I talk about what indexing on the time axis means, discuss regular and irregular time indexing, and show examples from home price data, camera sales, climate change, and more.

00:00 – Intro
01:17 – Age as Index
01:43 – Regular vs. Irregular Time Indexing
03:02 – Camera Sales Data Example
03:40 – Running Data Example
04:12 – Climate Change Data Example
04:38 – Irregular Time Indexing, Bear Markets
05:37 – Market Penetration Example
06:22 – Making Time Index Charts in Software
06:47 – Closing

[marcothesis]

I recently discovered your channel and watched all your videos. Hope to see you making that irregular time periods indexing with Tableau soon!

[jenniferrash]

This is great--thank you! Yes, it would be great to see further explanation of how to build time axis index charts in Tableau!

[sedotable]

Great videos Robert! Thanks for all the effort you put into these.

[muhammadazhar]

This is awesome. Thank you for this, also would love to see a series on choosing a chart for specific data.

[angalytical]

Thanks for your work! These videos are a nice length and offer helpful explanations for visualization concepts.

For your custom graphics, have you considered using higher color contrast between your data series and chart backgrounds for better accessibility? The thin and dark lines on the dark virtual background are a bit hard even for me to see, and I worry about recommending the videos to a broad audience that might include people with slight vision deficiencies.