Changing over time
One of the questions that we commonly ask about data is, how has performance changed over time? This helps us understand how events of decisions affect outcomes. While understanding the relationship between discrete numbers is helpful, it's even more useful to understand the rate of change, or the percentage change over time. The reason why it's important to understand the rate of change is that, while discrete numbers may appear to be increasing, the actual percentage change from year to year may be declining.
In the following example, we will discuss how to graph the amount of remittances over time and we will create a quick table calculation that shows the percent difference:
On a new worksheet, using the World Development Indicators data source, drag Year from the Dimensions pane to the Columns shelf.
Drag Remittances (USD) from the Measures pane to the Rows shelf.
Exclude years before 1980 by using your preferred method. We selected them on the x axis, hovered over pill...
