Egil, one of our alert readers from Norway sent this to me in e-mail, which I swear, I am not making up – A Fancy Gauge Chart. See the e-mail and chart yourself.

To make it more industrial-like, I’ve added:
1. Brushed metal background picture
2. Gradient fill format to the pie shares
3. A gradient fill. semi-transparent square (to make glass effect)
4. Sqrew-head pics
The original gauge chart template behind Egil’s industrious effort caused enough debate among our community.
I think gauges are a poor way to visualize data, but I don’t completely shoot them down either. Gauges connect well with certain type of audience / situations – like kids, informal communications, conveying just one point etc. But it would be disastrous to have a gauge chart on your weekly dashboard to the CFO, no matter how industrial-like it is.
Download Egil’s version of the Gauge
Click here to download the fancy gauge chart template. Thanks Egil for your idea. I think it is pimptastic.
Anyways, here is a fun challenge:
Download the gauge, and pimp it in your style. Take a screenshot, upload it somewhere and link it here. I want to see how you would pimp it.
And if you are furious to see a gauge chart on this blog, remember, and I am not making this up either, today is Friday. Have fun folks.
PS: yes, I am HUGE fan of Dave Barry, and no, I am not making this up.
Added later: Just to be clear, I think Egil‘s implementation is pretty cool and shows what is possible with excel.














2 Responses to “Celebrating the Lookup Formulas – VLOOKUP Week @ Chandoo.org”
How did you arrive or formula when you ask me who made more sales Jackie or Jamie?? I could not figure the formula out yet??
@Frank
You need to sum up the sales for Jackie and compare them to the sales of Jamie over the same period.
The practical parts depends on how and what data you have and how it is arranged.
But it will either involve a Sum, Sumif, Sumifs or Sumproduct to accummulate the sales for each within a specified date range.