In the 38th session of Chandoo.org podcast, Let’s optimize data to ink ratio of your charts.
What is in this session?
In this podcast,
- Announcements
- What is Data to Ink Ratio?
- Obvious ways to optimize Data to Ink Ratio
- More ways to optimize Data to Ink ratio
- Highlighting what is important
- Conclusions
Listen to this session
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Click here to download the MP3 file.
Links & Resources mentioned in this podcast
Recommended Books for creating better charts:
- Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few
- Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
Optimizing data to ink ratio – Charting case studies
- Closing gaps in gender equality chart
- Why 3D pie charts are evil…
- Visualizing world education rankings
Techniques for highlighting what is important
- Display alerts in dashboards to grab user attention
- Adding meaning titles & legends to charts
- Never show simple numbers in your dashboards
Invitation to “Becoming a better analyst” Webinar
As mentioned in the podcast, I am running my first ever webinar on Wednesday, July 15th – 2015 (2PM EST). The topic is “How to become a BETTER analyst?”
Please click here to register for the webinar & become a better analyst.
Transcript of this session:
Download this podcast transcript [PDF]
How do you optimize Data to Ink Ratio?
What about you? Do you worry about data to ink ratio when making charts? How do you optimize it? Do you have a process for it? Please share your tips by posting a comment.
Subscribe to Chandoo.org Podcast
15 Responses to “Make a Bubble Chart in Excel [15 second tutorial]”
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!
Whyyyyyyyy?
The idea is to tell how to make a bubble chart. I got an e-mail from a reader recently asking how the scatter bubble is made. So I thought a 15 second tutorial would be a good idea to show this.
Did that email go "Dear Chandoo, I know that you scorn bubble charts, but if I don't do one in Excel for my boss then he'll fire my sorry ass, and my children will have to be sold for medical experiments in order for me to be able to afford the upgrade path to Excel 2010"?
If so, fair enough...it's all in the greater good 😉
Chandoo,
I am using excel 2003 and it is not working. The x axis is not the one that I enter in x axis column. Please help! Thanks.
Sorry, after few attempts, I managed to get the right result. I shouldn't select the title (header) of the table and select only the data to produce the right bubble chart.
What's wrong with bubble charts? Is there a better method for displaying scatter plots with lots of overlapping data points? Don't tell me you'd rather jitter!
@Sanwijay: Cool.
@Precious Roy: There is nothing wrong with bubble charts. Infact, it is the only way to show 3 dimensional data (x,y and sizes) without confusing your audience. Jeff is worried that people might misuse the chart. As with any chart, bubbles also have a place and time for using them.
I recommend using bubble charts to show relative performance various products in several regions and similar situations.
Also, human eye is notorious in wrongly estimating the bubble sizes (as we have to measure areas). See http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/07/28/charting-lessons-from-optical-illusions/
We can partially improve bubble charts by adding data labels, but if you have too many bubbles, the labels will clutter the chart and make it look busy.
I can't seem to find a way to plot more than ten bubbles on a chart and need to know how to add more
@KW.. why would such a thing happen. I am sure you can add more bubbles that that. Can you tell us exactly what you are doing...
Example table:
A B C (size)
Me: 25 30 15%
Him: 30 22 11%
Her: 12 30 20%
I am trying to make a bubble chart where the Y axis is A, the X axis is B, and the size of the bubble is C. There should be only 3 bubbles. I keep ending up with six (with the labels being only "Me" and "Her"). My goal is to have three bubbles, one representing each person. Clearly I am doing something wrong. Can you help explain...?
Hi,
I wanted to add data labels to the bubbles. Each bubble represents a different company name. Excel allows me to add the size, legend, x axis values and y axis values. How do I add instead- Company A, B, C, D for the bubbles?
youon you have to choice every data for every company..
ex:create bubble for A company,after that click right> add data label> adjust data labels :format data labels and choose : series name.
i hop u will succeed .
[...] we create a bubble chart with 2 bubbles. 1 for the actual mustache & 1 for target [...]
If we want bubble size to be controlled by one column, but the bubble labels to be controlled by another column, how can this be achieved?
many thanks!!!!