Mike Cisneros created a viz for the #MakeoverMonday data set on Oil and Gold prices. It is a great design especially in that he devised a correlation metric between the two prices. And he shared his thought process in a well written blog post, which won lots of praises on twitter.

Oil and Gold: Tracking the correlation between the prices of two commodities. #MakeoverMonday #MemoryLaneMonday https://t.co/i5S0nHWbNm pic.twitter.com/3VHowb6AsW

— Miguel Cisneros (@mikevizneros) April 10, 2017

I love the design very much. I think it is even more impactful if we reverse the vertical timeline axis and have the latest year on top. I made a similar tweak in an earlier post.

The advantage is multiple:
- The latest trend or change is always more interesting. It is what we want to emphasize. We don't need to scroll down to the bottom to find it out.
- Top of the chart is where the focus of attention is. It's where any call to action (CTA) should be. It's the best place to engage viewers.
- Per this data story, the volatility in price correlations got big swing in recent years. After the year axis is reversed, the chart looks like an atomic bomb mushroom cloud. It looks very dramatic. To the viewers, it shows that the volatility "grows" or even "explodes" through the years.
Click the image to go to the interactive version.

Conclusion

For the horizontal time axis, the convention is from left to right. For the vertical one, there seems no such a convention. It seems that from bottom to top, the chart is more impactful than the other way around.

That is the tweak of the day.