Slope charts are cool. They emphasise change between an end date and a start date by removing the noise in between. For a much more detailed explanation and justification, go read Andy Kirk’s homage to slope charts.

This post is going to show how to build a slope chart in Tableau. It’s not the first tutorial on this: there are others by Ben Jones and Andy Kriebel. The issue with those examples is that they all start with data that has just two time points. What happens if you have lots of time data and just want to show the start/end points?

I’m building this using the Superstore sample data.

Start with a time series.

First use a standard time series chart. In my example, I have Sales by Year for each Container. It doesn’t really matter whether you have a continuous or discrete date pill on your column shelf.

Keep only the first and last values

I want this to be a dynamic slope chart; if I filter the range of dates, the chart should continue to show only the start and end values.

To do this, I create a simple calculated field [First or Last]:

This calculation returns TRUE for the first mark on each line of each Container. Here’s what happens if I put the calculated field onto the Size shelf:

Show only the ends

Why put the calculation on the Size shelf? Because we need to Hide everything that isn’t the first or last values. In other words, everything that our calculation returns as False. Dropping a pill onto the size shelf reveals a legend:

Click on False. Then right-click and choose Hide. Voila! We have our basic slope chart:

Improving the basic slope chart

It’s easy to take this much further.

The first thing you can do is move Container from the Colour shelf to the label shelf. I like this for two reasons:

1. It’s easier on the eye to have fewer colours
2. The labels are right on the line so the viewer doesn’t have to move their eyes around the canvas too much to identify which line is which

You can also switch the time pill to something else if you wish. In the example below, I’ve switched to a continuous month and added a quick filter for Month:

We’re almost done.

I don’t like the labels, though. They’re above the lines rather than next to them and they’re only at one end.

To make space on the axis for labels alongside the lines and get the alignment correct, I need to:

1. duplicate the SUM(Sales) pill on the Row shelf
2. create a dual axis chart
3. change the continuous Month to a discrete Month, as shown below:
   

And we’re done (click here for an interactive version and to download my example):

We now have a completed slope chart. It looks great and you can change the filters in order to clearly show the change in Container sales between any two dates.