If you are building financial models or any other type of excel based decision models, chances are, there will be multiple scenarios in your model. Whenever you have multiple scenarios, you may want an easy, intuitive way to select one of them. In this post, I will present an interesting scenario display & selection technique that I received by email from our reader Itay Maor.
First see the scenario selection in action:
Download the sample workbook with scenario selection macro
Click here to download the workbook (.xlsm file) that Itay emailed me.
How does this work?
In order to understand how this works, first you must know the limitations of this file. It can only support up to 5 scenarios.
The workbook has a bunch of macros – ChangeScenario, AddTab, RemoveTab, RenameTab etc.
Here is how the magic behind this macro is cast:
- When you click any tab, that particular scenario’s input values are loaded by running ChangeScenario macro
- When you click the ‘x’ button, that particular scenario’s tab is hidden and other tabs are moved accordingly by running the macro RemoveTab.
- When you click the ‘+’ button, a new scenario tab is displayed by un-hiding one of the remaining tabs. This uses the macro AddTab.
- When you close the workbook, the tab order, scenario values are all preserved automatically.
The workbook uses very simple but clever macros to hide / un-hide tabs and display and select scenarios. I encourage you to dissect the macros and play with the file to understand it better. Go here to download the file.
Thank you Itay,
Thank you so much for sharing your work with us Itay. I have learned some valuable macro tricks exploring your code. I am sure our readers will be able to learn something from it. Thank you.
How do you handle multiple scenarios?
I never used a technique like Itay’s. Usually I prefer a scenario selection sheet with data validation and conditional formatting (more on this later in a post). I would like to know how you handle multiple scenarios. Please share using comments.
Share your workbooks, example files with us
I am always looking for new and interesting ways to solve problems using Excel. If you have something fun, exciting or useful to share, please email me your workbook / tip / article to at chandoo.d @ gmail.com. I would love to learn from you and share your ideas with others here.
14 Responses to “Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability”
I think the virtue of pie charts is precisely that they are difficult to decode. In many contexts, you have to release information but you don't want the relationship between values to jump at your reader. That's when pie charts are most useful.
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Chandoo,
millions of ants cannot be mistaken.....There should be a reason why everybody continues using Pie charts, despite what gurus like you or Jon and others say.
one reason could be because we are just used to, so that's what we need to change, the "comfort zone"...
i absolutely agree, since I've been "converted", I just find out that bar charts are clearer, and nicer to the view...
Regards,
Martin
[...] says we can Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability. Such a pie has too many labels to fit into a tight space, so you need ro move the labels around [...]
Chandoo -
You ask "Can I use an alternative to pie chart?"
I answer in You Say “Pie”, I Say “Bar”.
This visualization was created because it was easy to print before computers. In this day and age, it should not exist.
I think the 100% Bar Chart is just as useless/unreadable as Pies - we should rename them something like Mama's Strudel Charts - how big a slice would you like, Dear?
My money's with Jon on this topic.
The primary function of any pie chart with more than 2 or 3 data points is to obfuscate. But maybe that is the main purpose, as @Jerome suggests...
@Jerome.. Good point. Also sometimes, there is just no relationship at all.
@Martin... Organized religion is finding it tough to get converts even after 2000+ years of struggle. Jon, Stephen, countless others (and me) are a small army, it would take atleast 5000 more years before pie charts vanish... patience and good to have you here 🙂
@Jon .. very well done sir, very well done.
good points every one...
I've got to throw my vote into Jon's camp (which is also Stephen Few's camp) -- bars just tend to work better. One observation about when we say "what people are used to." There are two distinct groups here (depending on the situation, a person can fall in either one): the person who *creates* the chart and the person who *consumes* the chart. Granted, the consumers are "used to" pie charts. But, it's not like a bar chart is something they would struggle to understand or that would require explanation (like sparklines and bullet graphs). Chart consumers are "used to" consuming whatever is put in front of them. Chart creators, on the other hand, may be "used to" creating pie charts, but that isn't an excuse for them to continue to do so -- many people are used to driving without a seatbelt, leaving lights on in their house needlessly, and forwarding not-all-that-funny anecdotes via email. That doesn't mean the practice shouldn't be discouraged!
[...] example that Chandoo used recently is counting uses of words. Clearly, there are other meanings of “bar” (take bar mitzvah or bar none, for [...]
[…] Grouping smaller slices in pie chart […]
Good article. Is it possible to do that with line charts?
Hi,
Is this available in excel 2013?