The disclosed embodiments relate to a system that displays performance data for a computing environment. During operation, the system first determines values for a performance metric for a plurality of entities that comprise the computing environment. Next, the system displays the computing environment as a set of nodes representing the plurality of entities. While displaying the nodes, the system displays a chart with a line illustrating how a value of the performance metric for the selected node varies over time, wherein the line is displayed against a background illustrating how a distribution of the performance metric for a reference subset of the set of nodes varies over time.