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Let's say there is some Confidence Ranking - i.e. Consumer Confidence Ranking.

Year Rank
2010 1
2011 2
2012 2
2013 5
2014 7
2015 8

The rank is going down - i.e consumer confidence is going down - i.e. it's bad.

If I make a chart from this, it would look like this.

enter image description here

But in general, going up in a chart gives the perception of something good happening.

Is there a better way (other than labelling etc) to present this infographic?

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  • I don't know if this is against best practices, but if you flip the graph, with the x-axis on top and the y-axis reversed, that might solve the problem.
    – jazZRo
    Commented Oct 9 at 14:46
  • 3
    What is a Confidence Index Ranking? Is it a nominal, ordinal or quantitative kind of data? It seems to be purely ordinal: twice the rank means nothing. In that case, an xy graph with lines is not ideal (even wrong).
    – Pablo H
    Commented Oct 9 at 19:12
  • @PabloH - let's say you have 10 countries & you are ranking consumer confidence on the economy in those 10 countries. Consumers from the country with rank 1 has the better confidence in their economy than the remaining 9 & so on. So yes, twice the rank means nothing. What is the right type of chart or infographic to depict this?
    – user93353
    Commented Oct 10 at 7:09
  • It is so obvious that you should flip the y axis upside down. Please address this in the question; why have you decided this wasn't a good enough solution?
    – user67467
    Commented Oct 11 at 19:11
  • @minseong I never knew this was an option. Just discovered that even excel has a way to do this, so I am guessing it must be an accepted way
    – user93353
    Commented Oct 12 at 3:19

3 Answers 3

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Another idea is to invert the Y-axis. Keep the same line chart but invert the y-axis, so 1 is at the top and 10 is at the bottom. This way, the line will trend downward, matching the declining confidence.

enter image description here

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  • 2
    Reading from top to bottom might confuse people. Placing the X-axis on top could solve this.
    – jazZRo
    Commented Oct 9 at 14:40
  • Yes I agree. I prefer the Using score instead of rank answer tbh. But not sure if its feasible for the situation of the questioner.
    – Kish
    Commented Oct 11 at 10:03
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    This makes even more sense given what OP said a confidence index is: the number is not the user's reported confidence, it is the rank of the country against others. First place is normally at the top of lists. So first place can be at the top of the graph.
    – user67467
    Commented Oct 11 at 19:10
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enter image description here

Using score instead of rank.

  1. Now, how to calculate the score?. Track back on how did you calculate the rank. It might be based on a few metrics. So you may use that metric to plot the score chart directly instead of rank.
  2. If there was no metrics involved during ranking, do an inverse on the rank. You can see the fx in the image attached to see what I did.
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Chart of increasing risk

Googling brings up examples of representation, most with color enhancement. A summary:

Background increasing risk color

color

Increasing risk shape

shape

Background increasing risk gradient

gradient

Increasing risk graph color

line

Increasing risk comparison level

Dividing the chart between "normal" and risky levels:

level

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