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How to Create a Rank/Bump Chart

Table of Contents

What is a Rank/Bump Chart

Rank charts or Bump charts are like regular multi-series Grouped Line Charts, but values are compared and replaced with the 1, 2, 3 order of their magnitude. Rank charts show which was first, second and so on when values have been compared at that point in time.

Bump charts have usually the vertical Y axis reversed, so the top is first.

Steps to Create a Rank/Bump Chart

Start Visual Xtractor or Data Xtractor. Connect to a database. Create or design a SQL query. Run the query and check the results.

  1. Display and enable the Chart query builder.
  2. For your numeric data columns, select the Line Charts – Rank Line chart type.
  3. Select an optional column as Label, whose values will appear as chart legend items.

Rank/Bump Chart Demo Query

This is a great alternative to learn about and play with this type of chart, if you don’t want to create anything from scratch.

Look for this ready-to-use generated query under the Queries > Demo Queries > Charts > Cartesian Charts folder. Click on the “add demo queries” command link, if the Rank Line Chart demo query is not already there.

Rank Chart Demo
Generated demo queries must work for any database, with no restriction. They use constant values generated on-the-fly and your database SQL engine, but do not depend on data from your tables, and never alter your database in any way.

Customize your Rank/Bump Chart

  1. Show data labels as lollipop, inside custom bubble markers.
  2. Show top axis labels as slanted.
  3. Select curve lines (spline).
  4. Click on legend items to hide some lines.

Custom Rank/Bump Chart

Conclusion

  • Creating Rank/Bump charts in Data Xtractor or Visual Xtractor is fast, simple and trivial: declare two or more numeric columns from your result set as Rank Line, one column as Label if you wish, and that’s it!
  • All builtin powerful features of these chart type are common to most other charts: filtering series through the legend items, interactivity, monochrome or grayscale colors, rich axis and data label selections etc.
  • Switch to another builtin chart theme, or customize your own, for any possible color or other styles.