Earnings Chart Labels [Chart Review]
Back in November, I wrote a chart review post that discussed the column chart below, which appeared in BusinessWeek. The criticism I had for the chart was that the duration in days could have been on top of the columns instead of below. This is a quote from that post:
"What makes this chart more difficult to decipher is the space between the duration days (in black/red) and the end of the actual columns. A better option may have been to flip the "duration in days" value to be at the top of the chart."
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In the current issue of BusinessWeek, the column chart below appeared. As you can see, the Price-To-Earnings Ration is listed across the top instead of the bottom like in the old chart. Maybe they listened. Or, maybe they just came to the same conclusion I did and found a more effective visual display. Regardless, I prefer this design over the previous one. One drawback would be if the value for China was much more than 4%. If that was the case, there would be a greater span between the x-axis value of zero and the column labels, which wouldn’t be optimal.
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In Excel (Excel 2003), it is very easy to invert the labels so they are at the top instead of the bottom. When the x-axis is selected, choose the "high" option in the Tick Mark Label section, which is shown below. FYI – I doubt the BusinessWeek chart was created using Excel.
