Every year, on 4th Thursday of November, folks in US celebrate Thanksgiving day.
Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. [Source: Wikipedia]
A similar holiday exists in Canada too, they celebrate it on Second Monday of Every October.
We will celebrate thanksgiving in PHD style, by sharing a wacky formula tip.
Today, we are going to learn how to use excel formulas to find out thanksgiving day’s date for any year. Now, if only turkeys could use excel, they would be running for cover.
The formula:
Assuming cell A1 has the year, the formula to find US thanksgiving day’s date is,
To find Canadian thanksgiving date,
How does this formula work?
It is fetching the fourth Thursday of November by finding out what day of week November first is and then adding sufficient number of days to it. For eg. November First, 2009 is a Sunday, so thanksgiving day will be on 26th.
Happy thanksgiving everybody
I am in Denmark now, and there is no concept of Thanksgiving day here. But we don’t need a holiday to be thankful for all the wonderful things we have in life. I am thankful to have a loving wife and 2 wonderful kids and 6919 PHD members. Thank you.
PS: Watch out for a thanksgiving sale announcement on PHD in the next 3 hours.
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!