When looking at the various visualizations, it’s easy to overlook deviations. Although, it’s very crucial, and frankly, fun to utilize. So what is deviation? It shows the amount of change/variation from a specific point; this fixed reference point can be the average or a target/goal. It helps the viewer if this reference point was as specific as possible.
A diverging bar chart shows the visualization of opposing categories. Here the number of positive responses are on the right; while the number of negative results are on the left. The length shows the values where the longer the bar, the higher the value. Furthermore, color separation represents good and bad. Where the blue represents profits made, while yellow represents underperformed profits. Although here, it would be advisable to darken the colors to differentiate the values better.
Here we see a diverging stacked bar, which is primarily used for survey results. If we look at the “Has grace under pressure” category, we see that it’s divided into the survey by disagree, neutral, and agree.
Here we have a spine chart that shows how one category compares with others across a particular indicator. By digging deeper into a specific value, we find out more about its behavior.
This graph may be a little difficult to understand at first, but it’s actually quite simple. An example would be a person’s weight loss process. The yellow area from 2015, shows the amount of weight lost in that particular time and the blue would show the amount of weight gained in that time period.
So that’s a visualization for deviation! Although a simple visualization category, it’s very useful when comparing a category to a certain reference point.