Line chart in 1786: Shared baseline
One annotation sentence. Date the source. Keep Line chart with “Shared baseline” and 1786 from 1786. Variant 1 of Line chart (Time series). Same encoding, different layout.
William Playfair, 1786 — later refined for meteorology and markets position of a polyline through ordered time Yes if one claim is visible at a glance in Meta, Google and retail print; otherwise link to a full figure. Yes for lab reports and poster boards if axes, units and a source line are present.
Excel or Google Sheets or PowerPoint; export SVG/PDF. Do not rely on hue alone. Label directly and check greyscale. Line chart: honour position of a polyline through ordered time, and switch when unordered categories, or more than about four overlapping series. The core mark of Line chart is position of a polyline through ordered time.
trends, seasonality and a few series over time The eye compares length and position more accurately than area. PowerPoint, Excel or Google Sheets and Meta, Google and retail print share the same geometry. Decoration rarely persuades; it slows reading. Perspective distortion wrecks comparison. Keep it flat.
Keep axis, unit, and year. If “Shared baseline” is the axis, the figure is 1786 and the year is 1786. Keep Line chart with “Shared baseline” and 1786 from 1786. 17861786
Figures to keep
- Year of the chart
- 1786
- Axis figure
- 1786
- Chart
- Line chart
- How to read it
- Shared baseline
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