Comparing two time series

Stacked charts are often useful for measuring the combined area covered and relative differences in y axis values for two or more series. We will use the time series stacked chart to compare the prices of oranges and bananas:

Setting parameters for the time series stacked chart

The Style section of the chart provides a stream style option. The width of each stream is proportional to the value in that category:

Time series stacked chart

In the stacked chart, the increase in price of both bananas and oranges is visualized through the increasing width of the stream. Since 2010, the color-coded streams show that oranges have had a relatively higher price variance than bananas. We can switch to expand styles and see whether, besides the higher price variation, oranges show a higher upward trend in prices:

Changing the variation

After switching to expand...