# ✨ Show & Tell Thread - Favorite Charts **URL:** \ **Category:** Plotly Studio\ **Tags:** show-and-tell, tips-and-tricks\ **Created:** [July 25, 2025, 5:12pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/show-tell-thread-favorite-charts/93370 "2025-07-25T17:12:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![chriddyp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/community.plotly.com/chriddyp/32/16855_2.png) [@chriddyp](https://community.plotly.com/u/chriddyp)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2025, 3:56am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/show-tell-thread-favorite-charts/93370/5 "2025-07-28T03:56:38Z")
**5 ways to time series!** We usually visualize time series data the same way - a line chart showing the data over time. But there are many ways to view the time series data in different ways. Here are a few of my favorites. This data is hourly energy consumption from an electrical grid: [Hourly Energy Consumption | Kaggle](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/robikscube/hourly-energy-consumption) 1. **Line Chart over Time** Rather than just showing the raw data, I like to sometimes show moving averages, min/max bands, and other options on top of the raw line data: > Energy demand over time as a line chart with toggles to show daily min/max bands, daily moving average overlay, and option to hide main series. Set uirevision so that I can change the options in the dropdown and the graph’s zoom levels don’t change. ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/6/0/6098777167a19072830dd5010806afffe87c3bca.jpeg) 1. **Heatmap** > Energy demand patterns as a heatmap with dropdown to select time grouping (Day of Week (Mon-Sun) on xaxis vs hour of day (on yaxis) OR week of year (1-52) (on xaxis) vs day of week (Mon-Sun) (on y-axis) and aggregation method (average, max, min). This is one of my new favorites. You can view the data by day of week vs hour of day: ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/a/1/a1bf93f8bef82ebca1a8f110167968714f9ed2ce.png) Or week of year vs day of wek: ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/3/8/38dafb9c6ee701b6c012c53e2b9bb1ad230d4cb0.png) 1. **Start of Time Period Line Charts** Another new fav - These line charts allow you to compare one time period to the next. Helpful for month over month comparisons or hour over hour comparisons when there is a strong cyclical pattern in the data. > Seasonal demand comparison as multiple line charts with dropdown to select grouping (day of month by month, hour of day by selected days) and aggregation method (average, max, min) with background average reference line So for this energy data, there isn’t really anything you can see looking day over day (“Day 5” of the month doesn’t really mean anything for energy data but if you are tracking something like month-over-month revenue then this would be a good view to look at) ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/4/0/40e20182bc1d4f667be5eafe0f4521b046af120c.jpeg) BUT energy data has a strong patterns hour over hour: ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/8/d/8d4fc98f601f1dcdc95781224f1f11ab7a4f8ae4.jpeg) The great thing about Plotly Studio is that you can easily add these dropdowns to easily compare these different views. ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/0/c/0c5aa7d4d75008046429fedd89eb6192254b8bbd.png) 1. **Table View** Sometimes you just can’t beat a table! I’ve been specifying compact tables with conditional formatting and additional, optional derived computational columns. The tables can show the raw data or aggregated data. > Energy demand data table with conditional formatting and compact display including deviation from average column with color-coded background highlighting. use ag grid in a compact layout with monospace fonts. Add option to hide/show columns for various aggregation types (min, max, mean, and some others. Show an option to show all of the raw data vs aggregated by hour, day, week, month, year. ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/9/c/9cb89e224539f66c4cd4cd4f4c45883019dfba41.png) ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/0/4/04614159f0f83e937b7f23f190dfed4d35899d0a.jpeg) 1. **Subplots / Small Multiples** These can be a little finicky to get right but are also a nice way to do time period comparisons. The prompt is fairly detailed to get the chart to render just right with strong data-to-ink ratio (h/t Tufte): > Energy demand sparklines in calendar view as small multiples with toggle between monthly calendar (4x3 grid) and weekly calendar layouts for high data density visualization. Sort the lines after aggregation and grouping. Add an option to have the same y-axis range for all charts vs separate. Make the titles small. Add option to show the subplots in the order of the date vs the max average. Make the charts small (100px tall, 100px wide), no margins, no lines (no zero nor grid lines). I like to include options to switch between unified y-axis ranges vs independent y-axis ranges. There’s no right option here - it depends on what you are interested in looking at. It’s amazing to be able to specify these different visualization options within the card itself. Here are a few different views. ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/4/a/4a291f2c1a04731c7b85ceb18a189277fad5482d.jpeg) ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/0/b/0b47c955afc474e1973fc0c23300ac5eb35cb3fe.png) ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/3X/f/f/ffde5802b8bc04b37ce2b850b1696cc2e34a2daf.png) --- _[View the full topic](https://community.plotly.com/t/show-tell-thread-favorite-charts/93370)._