Introduction to line charts

Line charts are indispensable in data visualization, ideal for showing trends over time. They plot data points that are connected by lines, helping to track movements and patterns easily.

With their clear, linear presentation, line charts remain favored in settings like business analytics, academic research, and journalistic reporting, offering straightforward insights into time series data.

Anatomy of a line chart

In a typical line chart, the X axis often represents time, while the Y axis shows the measured values. Data points are marked at regular intervals and connected by a line, visually depicting trends over time.

Flourish enables you to expand upon the basic line chart format, offering templates for variations such as multi-line charts, area charts, bump charts, line charts with projections and even dual axis charts. These tools are user-friendly and designed to enhance your data visualization efforts.

Explore some of the templates we offer below, or read our blog post for insights on selecting the ideal chart type for your dataset.

Small multiples

The grid of charts (also called small multiples) option in Flourish allows you to compare related charts side by side to easily analyze different segments of your data. This approach gives you the flexibility to either use the same scale and axes across charts for direct comparison, or adjust them according to the needs of each data segment.

The intuitive chart editor in Flourish streamlines the creation of small multiples, making advanced visualization techniques accessible without the need for any coding.

Create an interactive line chart

When setting up your data for a line chart in Flourish, your first column A should list the time intervals, like years or days. Your following columns, for example B-D , will then represent different data series that you want to track over time, such as measurements or statistics from various geographic regions. This layout allows you to visualize and compare trends across different categories over the selected time period.

If your data contains extra information, you have the option to include more columns. These are useful for segmenting your data with a row filter or enriching the information displayed in each chart’s popup.

For a step-by-step walkthrough on setting up your data and refining your chart, check out our help doc.

In Flourish, there are multiple user-friendly ways to boost the interactivity of your line charts. Add an interactive legend, or create a Flourish story and enhance your graph with annotations. Browse through our blog to see what else can you do with Flourish.

Resources

Here are some resources to help you get started with line charts:

• Line, Bar, Pie template – an overview
  
• How to add a time slider to your Line, Bar, Pie charts
  
• How to color an individual bar or line