This post is from GuestBuster Jeff Weir in our Chart Busters series.
Note: The post slightly longer, but worth every word. Just get a cup of coffee and soak in to this visualization goodness. (Also, click on any image to see its full version)
Over at the FlowingData blog, they’ve been talking about this pretty slick looking Choropleth Map that shows how Medicare returns vary across the United States:
The above shows total Medicare reimbursements in 2006, either by Hospital Referring Region or by State, depending on the radio button. Using the dropdown box, you can change it to this:
…which is how the data looks if you overlay it on a Giraffe. Oops, I forgot to rotate it before saying that. Bear with me a moment…
There. See the Giraffe now? Good.
A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say. But is a Choropleth worth the many line charts and clowns that you could squeeze into the same valuable screen real estate? Let’s find out, by evaluating what this particular chart does well, and what it does poorly, and whether other charting methods might better convey its information.
Words and music.
Right off the bat, there’s a simple way that the authors could improve this chart. While they include a description below the chart to point out what the data is, and where it came from, they miss something just as important…what they concluded from all of this. So before we consider adding – say – bullet graphs, let’s consider adding some bullet points. A few sentences can tell readers important stuff that would otherwise remain hidden in an undownloaded PDF report. Insights like:
- Care is often better in low-cost areas.
- Growth in returns are only partly explained by advancing technology, and
- Differences in growth rates across regions seem largely due to discretionary decisions by physicians that are influenced by the local availability of hospital beds, imaging centres and other resources-and a payment system that rewards growth and higher utilization.
Straight off the bat, this would make the graph a better graph…without even messing with its form.
But mess we must…
…because lurking below the chlorophyll green of this Choropleth Map are a few serious charting oversights. Ready? Let’s check ’em out.
Scale? Fail!
First, check out the legend.
Crikey…its bands are as discrete as Bruno. Its scale is about as even as my temperament. It varies about as much as =RANDBETWEEN(PaydayBankBalance, UsualOverdraft).
If you fire up Excel and look at the spread covered by each range, you see just how arbitrary the different price bands are:
Whoa…the spread of that $9k to $16k band is nearly 15 times larger than two of the other bands. That can’t be good, can it?
Nice profile
If you were to graph financial spread of each group against the aggregated number of Hospital Referral Regions that fall within each spread, you get something like a histogram. The difference between the sizes of these bands is about as different as the number of performers on stage at a Bob Dylan concert in 1964 compared with 1974. See for yourself:
Oops, wrong graphic. Try this:
Normally histograms have equal widths for each band, but here I want to highlight just how unequal the bands used are. Plus, this lets us regroup the data into evenly spread $1k bands, and overlay it on the first distribution, to see how it compares. Here’s one that I prepared earlier, with the red line as the regrouped data…
Vastly different picture isn’t it. The red is kinda like Data Pig’s heart rate before he eats chocolate covered bacon on Saturdays, and the blue is how his ECG would look when he’s in the ambulance, on the way to the hospital.
This makes it very hard to answer that important question “…compared to what?” With such different sized bands, how can we compare one to another? How can we be sure that the distributions within each band will even allow us to?
For instance, take the highest band spread of $9k to $16k: without any further information to go on, we might assume that the median (i.e. middle) value for districts in this category is midway between the $9k to $16k boundaries, like this:
But that’s like assuming that Simon and Chartjunkle (oops, Garfunkel) have equal talent. We’d be wrong. Verywrong. In actual fact, there’s only three data points to the right of our guessed median line. And as for the 55 hospital regions in Group Five that fall to the left of it…well, they all get tarred with the same brush those worst three performers. The actual median for this group is a lot further left, as shown below:
This means that over half the data in this 5th band actually falls much closer to the far left of the graph than to the far right of the same group it’s been placed in.
You can see this better if you add a one-dimensional strip plot above the graph, which gives an idea of where the 300 odd values fall within the entire range:
Whoa…looks like we’ve got a few outliers to contend with.
What a State we’re in…
This seemingly arbitrary ‘bucketing’ effect is exacerbated when aggregating the different hospital regions into State-wide totals. Except this time regions are being penalised by arbitrary geographical boundaries, as well as the arbitrary financial ones above.
Take Texas for example. Aggregating everything up to the State level, Texas appears in that highest band. Yet at the Hospital Referral Region level, one third of its 22 different hospital fall below the national average, and the median for the whole State is around $8,800. So we better be careful making assumptions from a State-wide view, because the Choropleth averages some very diverse costs over some very large chunks of real estate.
To see just how diverse, let’s rank the entire US values from smallest to largest, and highlight where the Texas readings fall within that range:
What can we tell from this? Firstly, nearly all regions nationwide fall between $5k and $10k. Secondly, there are a few outliers that really skew the picture at the high end. Thirdly, in the Texas case, the State average is boosted somewhat by 3 Texan districts that happen to be among the worst 10 culprits nationwide – one of which is clearly an outlier at $15k. Unfortunately for the lower cost Texan regions, they’re guilty by geographical association…kinda like being kidnapped and held for a zillion dollar ransom, just because you happen to live in the same State as Bill Gates.
So what do we get by aggregating to State boundaries? Probably more blurring than insight. After all, what good would a weather report be to Texans if it only reported the average weather they could expect as a State! Instead, it’s better to keep the aggregation at the Hospital Referral Region level. That way, we can look at this:
…and ask things like “Wow, why such a difference between Waco and the surrounding bits of Texas?” and “What the hell is Alaska doing there?”
Legends in the making…
What’s far worse that this though is that when looking at the State-wide map, the legend is now really, really wrong.
Here’s the legend next to the actual State-wide figures, for comparison:
Whoops…the graph title has changed to reflect we’re now looking at Medicare spending per beneficiary per State; i.e. State averages. The legend is still looking at Hospital Referral Region averages, which have a much greater spread. For instance, the Choropleth shows six States as being dark green regions, and the legend says they fall somewhere within $9k to $16k. But the actual data shows they fall in a $9.4k to $9.6k range. Oops! Slight misrepresentation, there.
How to fix it
Obviously this graph really should use a quantitative scale with equal increments; one that changes to reflect the selection that users make. What’s more, colors should have just enough variation so as to highlight any important differences, without being overwhelming or mistaken for camouflage.
But is a Choropleth Map the best way to present this data in the first place? If you want something for people to play with online, then maybe…but if you want to compare things very closely to other things, then maybe not.
For sure, a Choropleth Map looks cool, and it has what Tusha Metha calls “natural context”. But from an analytical perspective, a Choropleth only really reports how one thing changes with regards to geography. If geography is a major determinant – or if you want to show people how things look in their own back yard compared to others – then perhaps this is the piece of kit you need. But if there’s other factors that have much more sway on your data than geography, then perhaps not. For instance, we might want to see whether population density plays a significant part in Medicare returns, given the likely economies of scale from providing healthcare to densely populated regions vs. urban regions. Nows the time to break out a scatter plot:
Hmmm…looks promising. (Note: I’ve used State-wide data for the above…ran out of time to track down densities in the different Hospital Referral Regions, which is what I’d prefer to do.)
Or we might want to zoom in on the best or worst offenders, and see just how different they are to each other, and to the median value:
Conclusion
I think a better, fairer Choropleth Map at the Hospital Referral Region level would be interesting. But I don’t think it would be enough. To quote from Stephen Few’s latest book Now you see it: “Color is good at drawing your attention to something if used sparingly, but is one of the ‘pre-attentive attributes’ that is not quantitatively perceived in and of themselves”.
Whereas lines and 2D precision are very precise ways to encode quantitative values.
So when it comes to answering the ‘Compared to what’ question, I don’t think you can beat this:
Choropleth Maps in Excel
For information on the implementation of Choropleth Maps in Excel, check out Tushar Mehta’s excellent resources.
For more information on the pros and cons of Choropleth Maps, check out the Clearly and Simply blog, where Robert has built on Tushar’s excellent approach to produces some great downloadable templates. He also offers advice on potential drawbacks of Choropleth Maps, such as:
- No visualization of development over time
- No information on exact values (unless you are implementing tooltips including the data)
- Very limited direct comparability of the regions
- Possible perception problems with regards to the size of regions (e.g. Rhode Island on a US map)
- Possible misinterpretation because the size of a region may have a greater impact on the user’s visual perception than the intensity of the fill color
- Requirement of real estate on a dashboard
His recommendation: carefully consider whether or not a Choropleth Map is the best visualization for your purposes. Check out his dashboard of Lithuania at a glance to see how he mitigates some of the potential problems by incorporating other graphs into the display.
I used Robert’s template to produce this State-wide Choropleth Map of total Medicare spending per enrollee, 2006 using the same Medicare ranges as the Choropleth that’s the subject of this post:
…
…then I replotted the graph using data that had been regrouped $1k bands:
While I don’t advocate this approach, it’s interesting that even though this is aggregated to State-wide totals, you can see significant differences between the graphs.
Right, that’s it. I’m off to the Hospital to see someone about my writers cramp…
About the Author
Jeff is a Business Analyst from Wellington, New Zealand who has recently discovered a strong interest in Data Visualization. He swears by Edward Tufte and Stephen Few as much as he swears at Excel 2007. He’s so new to advanced Excel, that 2 years ago he had to ask a work friend what the dollar signs in $A$1 meant. Now that he knows that, he’s trying to find out what the dollar signs in $A$2 mean.
Note from PHD:
Thank you Jeff. Your passion and knowledge is truly outstanding. I have a whole pack of donuts waiting for you.
38 Responses to “Time to showoff your VBA skills – Help me fix ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert snafu”
I tried your code with 2003, it works.
But, I know Addpicture does not take URLs anymore with 2007 onwards, perhaps its the same with picture.insert as well.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928983/en-us
The above link gives the solution as "picture fill in a shape such as a rectangle".
Tried to recreate this, but it worked fine for me. I just took the image of the error you showed in the post. Is there more info that can narrow this down a bit?
Don't know if this helps?
http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=47101
Hi
Not sure if this is what you're after, but I just tried this
Sub Macro1()
ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert("http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/images/logo.gif").Select
End Sub
Tied a button to it on the sheet and it seems to work; hope this helps a little
Ian
@All.. the issue is in Excel 2007. In 2003 ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert seems to work fine. Unfortunately, I have design this in Excel 2007.. that is why I posted it here..
v2
Sub Macro1()
Set n = ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert("http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/images/logo.gif")
With Range("c12")
t = .Top
l = .Left
End With
With n
.Top = t
.Left = l
End With
End Sub
Ian
That didn't come out very well. This positions at c12, so can change easily:
Sub Macro1()
Set n = ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert("http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/images/logo.gif")
With Range("c12")
t = .Top
l = .Left
End With
With n
.Top = t
.Left = l
End With
End Sub
Works OK in 2007
Ian
The above codes work fines to my EXCEL 2007. Thanks.
Chandoo:
Try 'ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert'
With ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert("C:\Example.png")
.Left = ActiveSheet.Range("A1").Left
.Top = ActiveSheet.Range("A1").Top
End With
activesheet.pictures.insert "C:\Documents and Settings\Jon Peltier\Desktop\2007 stuff\insert_charts_2007.png"
Works for me in 2003 SP3 and in 2007 SP2.
Check the URL, and make sure you have internet connectivity.
What also works, and is newer (pictures.insert was supposedly deprecated in '97):
activesheet.shapes.addpicture "C:\Documents and Settings\Jon Peltier\Desktop\2007 stuff\insert_charts_2007.png", false, true, 200,200,100,100
Unfortunately you must specify dimensions (the last four arguments) and you don't necessarily know them. But the picture size is still related back to the original picture size, so you could use scaleheight and scalewidth to fix this.
Chandoo: I just re-read your post.
The code I posted works for me. However, I'm using a local picture. If you try to add a picture from the web, this won't work.
I remember solving this problem before by adding a rectangle shape first, then using the Shapes.AddPicture method to get a picture from the web.
I'll find that code and post it here.
Some more updates... The code "ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert (path)" works fine in Excel 2007 at home. Strange it failed miserably on my work laptop. Do you think this has got something to do with SP2 of MS Office 2007 or something like that?
@Ian, Jon: Thanks for the code snippets. I guess I will use my home installation of excel to do this.
Chandoo:
Try this on your work laptop:
Sub test()
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape msoShapeRectangle, 50, 50, 100, 200
ActiveSheet.Shapes(1).Fill.UserPicture _
"http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/images/dpwithPig6.png"
End Sub
FYI:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928983/en-us
I didn't mean to post code with a local file, because both approaches worked with an internet image as well. This is in Excel 2007 SP2.
activesheet.pictures.insert "http://peltiertech.com/images/2009-07/col_area_noblanks.png"
Jon: Looks like I have SP1 on my client machine! I wasn't paying attention.
Just checked my home computer where I have SP2, and you're right...looks like they fixed it.
I didn't even bother testing in SP1, though I could if anyone cares enough.
I'm afraid I don't have a solution, but I find it remarkable that after attaining a certain status in the Excel world, Chandoo does not need to post on an Excel discussion forum to get help for an Excel problem. Instead, he posts on his blog and all the gurus come rushing to his help.
Isn't Web 2.0 great?
Teylyn - I saw Chandoo's tweet first, and followed the link back to his blog.
@Mike.. thank you. I have seen the fill rectangle solution before posting the query here. For that matter, I have also tried the solution of embedding a browser control on a spreadsheet. both of these seemed a bit extreme. That is why I have asked it here.
But I guess I will end up using it if I had to build this in work laptop.
@Teylyn: I have thought of posting this in a forum. (Unfortunately I have not been to any excel group in the last 5 years. Last time I was active was when I built a jave based excel sheet construction solution using POI.HSSF classes of Apache... ) After searching for a few hours, I found several forum posts where others had same problem and the solution recommended (using .left and .top parameters) is not working for me. Incidentally most of these solutions are from a certain Jon Peltier 😛
I thought may be the problem is interesting for fellow blog readers. So I posted it here.
Hi,
Adapting the code in the question,
[code]
Sub InsPicture()
pPath = "http://chandoo.org/images/pointy-haired-dilbert-excel-charts-tips.png"
With ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(pPath)
.Left = Range("a1").Left
.Top = Range("a1").Top
End With
End Sub
[/code]
Seems to work fine
Looks like it was a problem in 2007 up to SP1, which was corrected in SP2.
@Jon.. seems like the case. I just checked the version at work laptop. it is 12.0.6331.5000 (SP1).
Thank you so much every one. I really appreciate your time and suggestions in solving this.
Glad to help. I couldn't understand why something so straightforward wasn't working.
Hi All
Is there a way of inserting a motion clip eg animated gif or swf or flv?
Thks
You can insert animated GIFs by inserting them in a browser control through VBA. For other types of movies, I can guess you can insert them as clip art.
I WANT THE INSERT PICTURE BY USING COADING
so currently i was struggling same as you, chandoo, with the insert picture method in excel 2007/10 from an url and came along your thread here.
so i re-designed the code on the addshape method as mike was suggesting it and all of the sudden it works just fine.
thanks alot to you guys, you were a great help
a big salut from switzerland
Hi guys,
I need help copying and pasting an image with the path in a cell.
I leave the code.
And thank you very much!
Sub Copiarimg()
Dim pic As Picture
With ActiveSheet
Set pic = .Pictures.Insert(Range("f2").Value)
With .Range("e9:g22")
pic.Top = .Top
pic.Left = .Left
pic.Width = .Width
pic.Height = .Height
End With
End Sub
I've played around with the approaches in these comments, and the code below is what I've come up with. The ImagePath can be a local file or a URL. As Jon mentioned above, the trick is to set an arbitrary value for the width and height, then call the ScaleWidth and ScaleHeight methods afterward to reset the picture to its original size. Once the LockAspectRatio property is set, you can change the picture width and the height will automatically scale (or vice-versa).
Sub AddPictureToRange(TopLeftCellAddress As String, ImagePath As String)
Dim pic As Shape
Dim l As Single, t As Single
Dim temp As Single
l = Me.Range(TopLeftCellAddress).Left
t = Me.Range(TopLeftCellAddress).Top
temp = 10# ' arbitrary value
Set pic = Me.Shapes.AddPicture(ImagePath, msoFalse, msoTrue, l, t, temp, temp)
pic.ScaleHeight 1#, msoTrue
pic.ScaleWidth 1#, msoTrue
pic.LockAspectRatio = msoTrue
End Sub
I need some help with inserting pictures. I have an excel file with a column of item numbers next to this row I want to insert a picture of this item. The pictures are coded with the item number so I tried to insert it with one of the codes above:
Sub InsPicture()
pPath = "http://img.bricklink.com/P/80/55236.gif"
With ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(pPath)
End With
End Sub
That worked but I need to do that for every row separtly.
So I tried in the code
pPath = "http://img.bricklink.com/P/80/"&Text(a1;"#")&".gif"
But that gives errors.
Anybody ideas?
Hi Nicholas, I used your solution in a related problem in Excel 2003 and it worked flawlessly..thank you!
Hi Mike Alexander,
Your solution with some changes was helpful in my problem in XL 2007, thanks.
Hi,
thanks all. In addition, I had a problem with multiple pictures inserting (every new picture replaced the prior one). I've changed it a bit, may be helpful..
Sub test()
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape msoShapeRectangle, 50 , 50, 100, 200
ActiveSheet.Shapes(1).Fill.UserPicture _
"http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/images/dpwithPig6.png"
ActiveSheet.Shapes(1).Copy
ActiveSheet.Paste
End Sub
Try this instead:
Sub test()
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape msoShapeRectangle, 50 , 50, 100, 200
ActiveSheet.Shapes(ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count).Fill.UserPicture _
"http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/images/dpwithPig6.png"
End Sub
Thanks to everyone, this thread has been very helpful. However, image inserting still doesn't work quite as expect for me.
While I can get a picture inserted into an Excel 2010 worksheet using either:
1) ActiveSheet.Shapes(ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count).Fill.UserPicture...
2) ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(pPath), and
3) Shapes.AddPicture...
unfortunately the images all insert with a display size determined not by the actual pixel dimensions of the image but by the dpi resolution.
So for example, if I insert two copies of the exact same 600x600 pixel image, one with a 300dpi resolution and the other with 72dpi, they display at vastly different sizes on screen.
While this might be intended behaviour for Excel in order to maintain a WSYWIG printing layout, I actually need a way to insert the image based on the the actual pixel dimesnsions and ignoring the dpi resolution.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Kez
Not doing an intentional bump, but realised I posted in rely to one of the repsonses here instead of to the main thread, so reposting.
=====
Thanks to everyone, this thread has been very helpful. However, image inserting still doesn’t work quite as expected for me.
While I can get a picture inserted into an Excel 2010 worksheet using any of the below methods:
1) ActiveSheet.Shapes(ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count).Fill.UserPicture....
2) ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(pPath), and
3) Shapes.AddPicture....
unfortunately the images all insert with a display size determined not by the actual pixel dimensions of the image but by the dpi resolution.
So for example, if I insert two copies of the exact same 600×600 pixel image, one with a 300dpi resolution and the other with 72dpi, they display at vastly different sizes in Excel on screen.
While this might be intended behaviour for Excel in order to maintain a WYSIWYG printing layout, I actually need a way to insert the images based on the the actual pixel dimesnsions and ignoring the dpi resolution.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Kez
Well, answered my own question 🙂
For those who might be interested, you can use this function:
Public Function GetPicDims(strFilePath As String, strFileName As String) As String
GetPicDims = CreateObject("Shell.Application").Namespace((strFilePath)). _
ParseName(strFileName).ExtendedProperty("Dimensions")
End Function
to get the dimensions of the image you want to insert. Then you can parse the return string and use the width and height values to add a rectangle shape of the appropraite size, like:
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape msoShapeRectangle 50, 50, iWidth, iHeight
which you then fill with the picture:
ActiveSheet.Shapes(ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count).Fill.UserPicture "c:\temp\test.jpg"
This way the picture gets inserted using the pixel dimensions and the (print) resolution gets ignored.
If desired, the GetPicDims function can be made more generic to get other ExtendedProperties.
Regards
Kez