Data Visualization With Power BI - Line Stacked Charts (No Coding Development, Branding, Business)

1. Introduction: One of the most powerful combinations within data visualizations in Power BI is the combination of line charts and column charts, where we have what we call as the line and stacked column charts, which is a very powerful visual to help you get some insights from raw data in a very professional fashion, regardless of the field of application, whether for marketing analytics, business intelligence, branding, graphic design, your skill set definitely needs to be complemented with the ability to pick up raw data and visualize it and model. This current class, I'll be sharing with you my expertise as a CEO, entrepreneur, as an engineer. How would I collect raw data and visualize it through Power BI, specifically creating line and stacked column charts which will help us drive the decision making process with regards to various applications, whether at business levels, marketing initiatives, sales. These lessons are very crucial. They will help you level up your skill set regardless of your domain or industry, let's get the class started. 2. Your Project: Your project for the class revolves around utilizing Power BI in order to create line and stacked column charts in which I'll be sharing with you some raw data after which you're going to be downloading the raw data, uploading it as a source through PowerBI to create your line and stacked column charts. Once you're done, you're going to be sharing your results with the rest of the community for feedback. 3. Data Visualization with Line Stacked Column Charts: Now let's learn about a very powerful combination visual, which is the line stacked column chart or line and clustered column chart. Both of them, they work just fine in terms of representing a combination of the lines visual and the charts visual. It combines literally both of them to help us make sense of the data. But it's important to keep in mind when we are using it, we need to visualize at the back of our minds how the data is going to be represented. Why? Take a look at the display for the visual. We got the X axis for the columns, and we got the Y axis for the columns, then we have the lines Y axis, which is the Y axis for the line. Then we got the column legends. We got the tool tips and the drill down option as well. So here's a pro tip for the X axis in order to get the best output from this, to get the best out of your data, include a continuous element. What do you mean by continuous? Something like time. For example, sales, this is not continuous. We're not talking about currency, dollar, 1.5. We're talking about the number of sales. You cannot have 1.5 sales. It's either you got one sale or two sales. So these values, which we call them as discrete, they cannot go on the X axis. You can put them on the Y axis. The best option to have for the X axis for such visuals is time. For example, hours, a month, seconds is up to you. So I've added on the X axis, all of the time elements, including the year, quarter, month, and day as part of the columns buildup that I've had, and the X for the Y axis, I've added the total sales to be corresponding to the X axis. If you take a look over here, for the X axis, I got the years. X axis, I got the total sales. And as we have learned so far, if I would like to modify the format, click on general data. For the sales, I'd like it to be the format to be a currency. Here we go. So I fixed this up, and now it's good to go. We go back to the visuals. You could add a Zoom slider in order to help you navigate through the data. And you could add data labels to help us show at every single bar that we have, what are the numerical figures? Think about it as ways to help you fine tune your data. Now, if I'd like to have any sort of an effect, on data, let's say shadows to help us have some shadows for the tile. Here you go. You can see the shadows. You can add borders. It's up to you. Then you can tinker with the background. This is part of the theme aspects that you could go about in order to fix up the visual representation of your data. But we're not done yet. We've added our columns, but this is a line bar chart, right? So we need to add a line. So I'm going to have the Y axis to represent the total sales as well. Look what happens over here. You're able to see the pattern, right? This is very powerful. We included the columns. We included the data labels. We've included the lines in order to represent any patterns. And let's take it one level further. Let's say I would like to add a legend in order to dive into the data even more to see certain elements. In this current case, I got the year of the sale and the total sales, right? Let's say I would like to have the console. So I'm going to add it to the legend. Look what happens over here. So you got the legend at the top, and you're able to click on this to filter out specific elements from your data. So you have your consoles. Now, you add the color label as part of the legend to help you see any specific patterns as part of the legend. Think about legends as the color layers which are related to your data. Now let's remove this. How about the drill through? What do you mean by drill through? Like I mentioned, you got the option to drill through the data from the top over here, or you could add the data to be drilled over here. Now, for the sake of convenience, I'm going to use the icons to go about this, keeping in mind, when you are drilling through data, it means you're zooming into the data or zooming out of the data. This is the best way to think about it. So I'm going to click on this to drill down the data. What I'm going to do is go to the next level in the hierarchy based on year, quarter, month, and day. This is the hierarchy that I now we go for the next level. We got quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, and quarter four. This is a perfect representation for sales per quarter. Business analysts, entrepreneurs, company owners, accountants, finance managers, they would love to see such data. You've got the quarters, and you're able to see the growth per quarter. This is very powerful. Let's go even further. Let's go to the next level. Per month. Perfect. Even further per day. So you're able to go into the data through levels. This is what we call as the drill down option. And that's why I've dedicated this lesson on the power of line and bar charts because you're able to see a lot of information. You're able to stack up a lot of data sources in order for you to be able to make sense of your data and to visually represent your data in the best 4. Wrapping Up: So what do you think? I truly hope that you found the class helpful. You're building up your knowledge in terms of how to visualize data, draw some insights, make informed decisions, rather than taking a look at sheets and random scattered pieces of information, you're able to add layers of visual representation, which will help you drive decision making in the best way possible. I truly hope that you found the class helpful and look forward to receiving your feedback and make sure that you follow my profile for the latest releases and updates, and I'll see you in the next class.