Time for another round of cool charting / info-graphic ideas around the web.
Most Popular Baby Names – all the way from 1880
Nametrends is a cool website totally dedicated to analyzing and showing baby name trends. They have pretty interesting stuff like, how baby names ending with -lie (charlie, willie, ellie etc.) fared from 1880. Go ahead, see the neat stuff at nametrends. [via kottke]
Flare toolkit for visualizing in Flash
Flare is a powerful tool for visualizing large amounts of data using Action Script. Check it out. [via FlowingData]
Funny map of online communities
This cartoonish visualization from XKCD pokes fun at the sizes and boundaries of various online communities. Really hilarious and neatly done. [via cool infographics]
This is a non-linear info graphic that talks about how designers approach problems. The site >think>draw>make is a dedicated to visualizations of design processes. See it. [via cool infographics]
What info is hidden in a bar code?
This pretty visualization of bar codes uses information contained in the black stripes to generate Bezier curves (ahem!) that look like a tree, hence the name bar-code plantation 🙂 [via swissmiss]
Also see:
- Excel Links around the web – [July 29]
- Excel Links Around the Web [July 22]
- Cool Infographics / Charts of the Week [July 24]
Have any visualizations, graphs or cool charting ideas and want them featured here? Drop a comment.
9 Responses to “Show forecast values in a different color with this simple trick [charting]”
While this works in a pinch, it clearly "lightens" the colors of the entire chart. Depending on where you use this, it will be blatantly obvious that you don't know what you are doing and present a poor looking graph.
Why not separate the data into different segments when charting and have as many colors as you have data points? You might have to create a new legend and/or repeat the chart in "invisible ink", but it would be cleaner and more consistent when new or updated data becomes available.
While I think I agree that doing it "properly" via a second series is preferable, I don't necessarily agree that making the entirety of the "future" (data, gridlines, and even the axis) semi-transparent is "poor looking". I think it could be seen as adding more emphasis to the "future-ness" of the forecast data.
In short, it's another tool for the toolbox, even if it's never needed.
Simply and clever 🙂
Quick & effective, cool. thanks.
I always use the dummy series.
Nice little trick, thanks very much!
Two sets of data better. Control is much better.
You can use the same chart next month to see what is actual and what is forecast.
To use this trick, I think grid lines has to be removed, that will make the graphic much more sharp.
to be honest, i dont understand why there is needed to do this way... in this case horizontal lines will be pale as well. then why a just can't change the color of the line partly???
Great tutorial. Thanks for the tutorial!