Dont think of me as a perverted spreadsheet user, I like visualizations in any form or shape. There is so much data even about human relationships like love and sex. This article shows 10 of the most visually beautiful and insightful of the infographics on sex and love.
Click on the titles above images to see the detailed site. The links are mostly safe for work, so enjoy the Friday 🙂
1. Charting the Dating Data – Dizzia’s Dates

What happens when you take all your dating data and plot it on a calendar by using icons for what happened during each relationship? Dizzia got curious and did just that. This is an awesome visualization with lot of wit and simplicity. You can quickly tell how long each relationship lasted and what they have done.
2. How does Love look like?

Ever wondered how the emotion Love actually looks? What happens when you try to plot love? Emotionally Vague has conducted surveys on people to find out the color, words, body parts associated with love and plotted this information in the above seen beautiful info-graphic. Very pretty and insightful.
3. Personal sex data goes web2.0 – Bed Posted

Have you ever wondered how your sex life is progressing? Not in an emotional way, but in the way like tracking monthly budget? BedPosted promises to give you insights into your sex life. Whenever you log in just feed little data about your intimate activities to this site and leave it to come up visualizations like one seen above. Another fun way to look at your data.
4. What to say during sex – Flow chart of things to say

This is a funny flow chart of things to say during xxx. Easy to understand and fun to read.
5. What do we search for – Love or Sex? – Google Search Insights

I like the google search insights because they work like a dashboard by providing all critical info in one place. This one works the same way. Looks like the S word beats L word here. The google search insights shows us that when it comes to love western part of the world is searching more for it where as for sex, it is the eastern part which is searching more. Also, the S searches outnumber L searches thrice.
6. What are people loving right now – Twitter tweets on Love

Twistori is more like a social experiment, a window through which you see how humanity (the tweeting kind) is feeling. The above shows a snapshot of what people love. It is a simple text visualization that is pretty to watch.
7. What is the right size?

The above is a very good example of partition chart in which spatial trends are meaningful. It shows preferences of several women plotted to reveal where the pleasure is. Okay, enough detail, I leave it to you to interpret.
8. [NSFW] Who does it most? – Durex sexual well being survey 2007

[NSFW] Durex sexual well being survey is an annual affair in which they reveal trends across the globe. I believe it is part of their business continuity plans. The above shown is a map visualization of sexual frequency across globe. You can see who is busy.
9. [NSFW] Fleshmap – Touching Preferences

Fleshmap [NSFW], which is featured here earlier, is an incredibly cool way to plot intimate data. They have gathered data about touching, looking and listening and plotted it in several creative ways. The site is full of insights. But do not browse from work as some of the charts are pretty graphic.
10. [NSFW] Playboy Centerfold Images – How they have looked from 1960 to 1990

This is clever visualization and art work. Jason Salavon took centerfold images from all the playboy magazines between 1960 and 1990 and scanned these images. Then he normalized the data to create the above images. Even though it doesn’t mean anything on the outset, when you know how the image is generated you would marvel at the thought of it.
Bonus: Viagra sales cartoon
This is as funny as graphs can get.
Like these visualizations? Why don’t you browse some of the coolest visualizations featured here earlier.
Have a great weekend 🙂















13 Responses to “Gantt Box Chart Tutorial & Template – Download and Try today”
Hi Chandoo
As one of your students I have followed your detailed example through with great success. However, Excel is acting in an unexpected way and I wonder if you could take a look?
http://cid-95d070c79aef808e.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Gantt%20Box%20Chart.xlsm
On my version, I have to type 40239 (Which equates to 2 Mar 2010) to get the chart to display 31 May 2010 (which should be 40329)!!??
Have I done something wrong or is Excel acting up?
Thx
Oli
PS Your example file in 2007 displays correctly.
Hi,
I like this idea a lot, but I agree the name is a little drab.
As an American I may just be seeing things, but to me the combination of lines and bars on your chart looks like a bunch of cricket bats.
Maybe you could work that into a catchier name. 🙂
Cheers!
Here is some code I use to keep the axis synched.
It may be useful to some of your readers
It is based on a comment I saw on Daily Dose of Excel.
Function SynchGanttAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
'Sets the X min and X max for Category axis
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
'
'Top Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlCategory, 1)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
'Bottom Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 2)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
Function SynchVerticalAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
' Excel 2007 only
'Right hand vertical axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 1)
.MinimumScale = 0
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
@Oli.. Can you check your file again.. I see 40329...
@Dave: Even I saw things.. the bars actually looked like lollipops. How about calling this lollipop chart - now that would be yummy and goes along the tradition of naming charts after eatables (bar, pie, donut...)
@Bob: Superb stuff... thanks for sharing 🙂
Hi Chandoo
This looks really good and I think it can also be applied to show project phases / milestones.
Question: Thinking further could this be amended to display a project lifecycle (Idea through to Implementation say 7 phases) on one bar / row? Just imagine 20 projects within a programme all on one chart one bar each showing their respective lifecycle stages i.e. on one page.
Idea: As the Gantt Box Chart this is quite intensive to set up re formatting etc how about the added extra of once you have completed this to "Save as template" i.e. saves the formatting and layout of the chart as a template so you can apply to future charts. Simple to do and will save the time formatting etc again and again and again.
Therefore tip: Click on your chart demo and then click on Save As template icon (2007) - edit file name and click on save. Ready to use / apply via Templates in Change Chart Type window.
Thanks and be very interested if the lifecycle question can be resolved
Mike
How embarrassing.
I was obviously suffering from numerical dyslexia. I was one of those days.
@Mike H: You can easily make this chart to work like a generic project lifecycle plan chart. All you have to do is,
1. in a separate sheet define the steps of lifecycle and various dates in a table (with 5 columns for each of the projects you have).
2. now use a control cell to input the project name you want to show in the chart
3. based on the input, use OFFSET Formulas to get the correct data
4. Rest is same as the tutorial above
For more info on the dynamic charting visit http://chandoo.org/wp/tag/dynamic-charts/ and http://chandoo.org/wp?s=OFFSET
Your solution is really smart but in the en Excel isn't meant to do stuff like this. I, as a former PM, always thought is was frustrating that you had to do stuff like this for something simple like a Gantt chart. So I built Tom's Planner. And would like to plug it here. I think it really solves the problem you are trying to solve in the most efficient way. Check out http://www.tomsplanner.com for a free account or play around with the demo.
Hi there,
Chandoo - this is really a very nice and helpfull chart - I adopted it, so I can report a forecast or the delay of a certain task (coming from my role as an auditor for projects).
One topic I´m currently struggeling with: I do have a project lasting for lets say 12 month. For a management reporting, I want to have kind of snapshot, lets say one month back and 2 month in the future. I tried with the offset formula, but failed. Any idea?
Thx
Lopi
[...] Ein viel geliebter Klassiker ist die Erstellung von GANTT-Diagrammen mit Excel. Wir hatten das Thema wiederholt schon hier. Chandoo.org hat sich mal wieder mit einer neuen Variante hervorgetan: Das GANTT-Box-Chart. [...]
[...] [...]
Hi Chandoo - fantastic xls. One thing I can't figure out how to do is adjust the alignment of the vertical axis. I would like to left align so that I could indent to represent sub tasks. Can that be done? Or is there a better way?
I've been trying to work out if there's a way to show weekends on the graph. The closest thing I've got is to add them on a secondary axis, but then I haven't been able to keep both axis lined up together! Any ideas?
Following on from this - is it possible to show things like holidays?