Last week I have reviewed Google’s flu trends chart and told you why it is an awesome chart. This week, I am going to show you how such a chart can be constructed in Excel.
First let me show you what I am able to do in Excel:
(compare this with actual chart on Google)
How I made the flu-trends chart in excel?
- Data, Data, Data: Data plays an important role in complex charts like these. The source data is thankfully available for download from Google. Flu incidence data is available by week (Sunday to Saturday) for every week since 28th Sep, 2003. For each week the data if given for all regions in various columns. But I was not able to use the data “as-is” to construct this chart. I had to massage and rearrange it a bit.
- The main issues is how flu season is classified (it starts on July and ends in June) and how the data is (we got weekly flu incident data, starting from Sunday to Saturday). The main issue here is each year, the weeks start on different dates. For eg. first Sunday in 2010 was on 3rd Jan where as in 2009 it was on 4th Jan. I tried using WEEKNUM() formula (examples), but it didn’t work well with the flu season (Jul to Jun). So I did some basic date math and ended up mapping weeks uniformly across years.
- The next issue is taking one big table of data with dates in rows and regions in columns and transform it to weeks in rows, years and columns and actual flu data for the selected region in the cells.
- Then I set up 2 cells, one where user would specify “region” and other where a comparison “year” can be selected. I have used data validation to control the valid inputs.
- I used the MATCH, INDEX formulas to fetch corresponding weekly values for all years for selected region. Thanks to MATCH, INDEX and HLOOKUP formulas, this is not such a big task either. And if the optional comparison year is specified, we repeat that years values in another column. Otherwise that column is NA().
- Using these columns, I made a line chart. Then I cleaned up the chart and formatted the 2009-2010 series in thick blue and rest all in thin light blues. The optional comparison series was colored in red (for contrast). [related: line chart examples]
- The only remaining piece is to show the heat map of flu intensities below the chart. For this I have used the very useful 3 color scale conditional formatting setting in Excel 2007. (of course, I had to setup some extra calculations so that the intensities are normalized across the region / years and change when user selects a new region, but you already guessed it.)
- I choose to drop the colorful legend as it adds little value.
- The rest is some formatting and presentation.
What I learned from this experience?
- When I looked at Google’s chart, I doubted if it can be created in Excel. But I was wrong. It can be done in excel, and it takes no more than 2 hours.
- Data and structure of it play extremely important role in any visualization.We should understand the data and know how to arrange / transform / massage it, to make better charts.
- Date formulas are a flu in the nose.
- Excel 2007 conditional formatting is just awesome. [more examples]
- INDEX, MATCH, LOOKUP formulas are very powerful. I *respect* them. [here is a tutorial]
Download flu trends chart and play with it
Download the file (Excel 2007 only). The file is locked, but there is no password. Play with it and tell me if you like it.
Do you like this chart?
Have you done something similar in Excel? What was your experience like? Do you like this chart? How would you improve / change it?
More visualizations using Excel:
Olympic Medals by Country | Survey Results Dashboard | Test Cricket Statistics | Dynamic Charts
PS: After a looong time this post had many “I”s
PPS: Have a good weekend.
18 Responses to “Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take?”
Great post. I can't vote, though, because the answer I want to put down is "it depends". As with all visualisations, you've got to take into account your audience, your purpose, technical skills, where it will be viewed, etc.
I'm with Andy: It depends. Some I would use, some I might use, some I won't touch with a barge pole.
Naturally I have comments 🙂
The dial gauge, though familiar, is less easy to read than a linear type of chart (thermometer or bullet). It's really no better than the traffic lights, because all it can really tell you is which category the point falls in: red, yellow, or green.
By the same token, pie charts are so familiar, people don't know they can't read them. Remember how long it takes kids to learn to read an analog clock?
Bullet charts don't show trends.
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or ine component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual values with Targets (or Budgets … [...]
I voted for #6 even though I agree with the other comments that it depends.
The majority of the votes are for the #2, thermometer chart. I still have yet to understand what happens when you are above plan/goal, which was brought up in yesterday's post.
Also, I agree with Jon in that it would be better to flip the series and make the filled part the target or goal and the line or marker the actual.
I am also a fan of using text when appropriate if the data is among other metrics in a type of dashboard. Calling it out by saying actual and % achievement is a good option.
Another "it depends" vote. Are you just looking at one or are you comparing a number of targets with actuals? You didn't include a text box. The problem with sentences is that they can get lost in a page of gray text. A text box can call attention to the numbers and line them up effectively.
I'm with Jon: "Some I would use, some I might use, some I won’t touch with a barge pole" and I'm surprised that some of your readers voted for the last group.
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
"It depends" is also my take. What I usually try to drill into my clients dashboard design is the fu ndamental difference between spot results (am I on target for this month) and long term trends.. I always try to create 3 different set of graphs to represent real perormance:
- spot results vs objectives
- cumulative results vs objectives
- long-term trend (moving average) mostly) to see where we're going
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take? (tags: excel charts) [...]
[...] Related: Charting Principles, How to compare actual values with budgets [...]
[...] Excel Charting Alternatives to compare values [...]
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
I totally agree, Bob. I would normally favour a line for the target and a column for the actual, you can see quite easily then which columns break through the line, then.
[...] best charts to compare actual values with targets — den Status mal anders zeigen, z. B. als Tacho [...]
Thermometer charts: "Not appropriate when actual values exceed targets" - this is easily solved by making the "mercury" portion a different color from the border, then you can clearly see where the expected range ends and the actual values keep going.
People seem to knock gauges quite a bit in dashboarding, but trying to show comparison of realtime data between operating sites and targets for each site can easily be done with a bank of gauges that have the optimal operating points at 12 o'clock.
The human eye is great at pattern stripping, and any deviation of a gauge from the expected 12 position will quickly register with an operator and attract his attention. Using a colour background, or meter edge, will also indicate the sensitivity of a particular site.
[…] Best charts to compare actual with target values […]
[…] Best charts to compare actual with target values […]
[…] work laptop I have a favorites folder just dedicated to Excel charts. Its got things like “Best Charts to Compare Actuals vs Targets” and “Best charts to show progress“. I love me some charts […]
I am wondering how will the plotting work, for some of the targets which may have been achieved before time. E.g. for the month of Jul the target was 226 and the actual was 219. So the chart will show a deficit in meeting the target by 7 points but what if this 7 may have been completed earlier in month of June. So ideally it not a deficit.