Yesterday I read about interaction plots on junk charts where he points out the merits of an interaction plot. Interaction plots show interaction effects between 2 factors. For eg. you can show how your product sales have changed between year 1 and year 2 using an interaction plot like below:
As you can see, interaction plot is a simple line chart with several series. You can easily make this in Excel. Here is a simplified tutorial to help you get started.
Step 1: Select the data and insert a line chart
This is simple, just insert a line chart from the data.
Step 2: Go to the line chart “data” and change rows to columns
You require this step only if your data is oriented differently.
Step 3: Format the interaction chart
Since excel colors each line series differently, you need to change the colors, add labels, adjust the label source (from data to series) and then format grid lines etc.
That is all, your interaction plot is ready to go.
Download interaction plot template for excel and play with it
Click here to download the interaction chart template for excel and use it to make your own interaction plots.
Points to consider when you are making interaction plots,
- Interaction plots can be too messy if you have a lot of series. Generally they loose the appeal after 6-7 series of data.
- Chart formatting with more series of data can be a pain too. Use F4 key if you are found repeating same steps.
- Make sure you don’t color individual series differently. You can use same color and label instead. It looks a lot better that way.
- In cases like last year vs. this year or budget vs. actual, you can even use clustered bars. See more examples on budget vs. actual charts for inspiration.
What is your opinion about interaction plots?
I think they are good for small data samples. I have personally not used them, but I like the idea and will use them when there is an an opportunity. What about you? Have you used them in any professional setting? How did your audience feel about the chart? Tell us using the comments.
6 Responses to “Make VBA String Comparisons Case In-sensitive [Quick Tip]”
Another way to test if Target.Value equal a string constant without regard to letter casing is to use the StrCmp function...
If StrComp("yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
' Do something
End If
That's a cool way to compare. i just converted my values to strings and used the above code to compare. worked nicely
Thanks!
In case that option just needs to be used for a single comparison, you could use
If InStr(1, "yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) Then
'do something
End If
as well.
Nice tip, thanks! I never even thought to think there might be an easier way.
Regarding Chronology of VB in general, the Option Compare pragma appears at the very beginning of VB, way before classes and objects arrive (with VB6 - around 2000).
Today StrComp() and InStr() function offers a more local way to compare, fully object, thus more consistent with object programming (even if VB is still interpreted).
My only question here is : "what if you want to binary compare locally with re-entering functions or concurrency (with events) ?". This will lead to a real nightmare and probably a big nasty mess to debug.
By the way, congrats for you Millions/month visits 🙂
This is nice article.
I used these examples to help my understanding. Even Instr is similar to Find but it can be case sensitive and also case insensitive.
Hope the examples below help.
Public Sub CaseSensitive2()
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbBinaryCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub CaseSensitive()
If InStr("Look in this string", "look") = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub NotCaseSensitive()
'doing alot of case insensitive searching and whatnot, you can put Option Compare Text
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub