Compare to Industry Trends

Data_Devon · 2024-07-23T20:47:58+00:00

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Hi community,

What's the best way to compare two different series when they are on totally different scales? My hope is to see if our trends compare to industry average.

I've got month, year, our total, and the industry comparable. For instance:

Date	My Company	Industry
Jan-24	100	50000
24-Feb	150	60000
24-Mar	175	70000

I obviously can't just graph them side by side since the scale of the industry would dwarf our values.

But what I do want to show is that we are growing faster than the industry broadly.

The problem with attempting a period-over-period chart is that I want to compare our trends to industry trends, NOT this period to last period (although that will be next step anyway)

Any thoughts??

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ColemenWilson

You could normalize the data:

https://help.mysidewalk.com/en/articles/3126175-what-is-normalization-and-when-should-i-normalize

Or just divide by a thousand, or ten thousand and then use a chart type that allows for multiple axis labels (left and right) and be sure to label the axis that has been adjusted to read "In thousands" for example.

All comments

ColemenWilson

You could normalize the data:

https://help.mysidewalk.com/en/articles/3126175-what-is-normalization-and-when-should-i-normalize

miguel_bustamante

I think the best way to do that would be to do a dual line period over period graph Ik you said thats not what you want but hear me out. You arent comparing this period to last period, you are comparing your this period over last period to their this period over last period. So it effectively becomes your gross change/month vs their gross change/month. That way you are both on the same scale. So instead of your line being 100 150 175 and theirs is 50000 60000 70000. It would be 50% increase 16% increase vs their 20% increase 16% increase. This would effectively show your growth rate vs their growth rate.

If you insist on using those numbers the best way would be a log scale; however, I find log scales unintuitive to most ppl. Like yes they get it as a concept, but they still see how much higher the line is and that does subconsciously affect the way they are going to view it.

Data_Devon

Outstanding! Thank you both. It worked and the owners that received my analysis were happy.

Thanks for everything.