1. 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.
    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.
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  2. [The technique described here applies to tooltips design as well.]

    Recently it came to me a question on how to put arrows next to numbers to indicate up/down. Some proposed to use Shapes as data mark in dual axis with numbers. This reminds me a custom number formatting trick that Simon Runc used quite a few times in Tableau forum. This post is to document the trick and all credits go to Simon. Neither shapes nor dual axis are necessary.

    This is how it works. Given a measure with a range from positive to negative. We can use arrows to indicate the direction of the numbers. Instead of shapes, we just need to use custom number formatting:
    ▲;▼;►
    This will show a measure in arrow: positive, negative or zero.

    Other options of interest are:
    ▲ +0;▼ -0;► 0 (Arrow with number)
    ▲ +0"%";▼ -0"%";► 0"%" (Arrow with %)
    ▲;▼;"" (When 0, then Null. No arrow at all)
    ▲;▼;    (When 0, then ▲ same as positive)

    We can use other characters if we wish, instead of solid arrows.
    升 +0;降 -0;平 0

    Many other custom number formatting tricks can be found here.

    To color the arrows differently, we need to create measures for each color, such as:
    In the Label editor, the label syntax is written as
    We can make the arrows bigger using bigger fonts. Note that each arrow is a measure. By custom number formatting, we make it an arrow.

    Below is a dashboard in which more varieties are shown. Open it to see the details.
    Click the image above to access the interactive version. 

    That's it.
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