Here is a charting challenge to begin your Christmas week. Recently Guardian’s Data Blog released World Education Rankings data and a sample visualization (shown below).
Kaiser at Junk Charts took this data and suggested a few alternative visualizations [part 2]. (shown below).
While Kaiser‘s charts are probably more insightful, they also appear complicated to my layman eye.
Naturally I wanted to give this data a charting-shot and see what comes up.
But before I show you how I cooked my chart, I want to throw a challenge to you.
Your Homework – Make a chart from World Education Rankings data
- Download the original data from here (or from here).
- Make a chart (or few charts) visualizing the data.
- Your objective is make it easy for us to understand the World Education Rankings Data
- Upload your workbooks to Skydrive or some other public file sharing site.
- Share the URLs, images etc with us thru comments.
- Bask in glory!
How I visualized World Education Rankings Data
When I looked at the original data, I wanted to explore 2 things.
- How are the scores in reading, math & science are distributed? [Distribution]
- How does one country compare with another? [Comparison]
To keep it simple and compact, I made one chart that meets both these objectives.
Here is what I could come up with:
How is this chart constructed (Recipe)
- The chart is a scatter plot with scores for each area plotted with a different y value (reading = 1, maths = 2 and science = 3)
- The chart is also dynamic. Visit Excel Dynamic Charts page if you are new.
- The four selected countries and average are extra series in the chart with diff. formatting.
- The messages are constructed using RANK formula and concatenate operator &
- Other tricks used – incell dropdown boxes, text boxes with formulas, symbols, and chart formatting.
Since the process of making this chart is a bit more detailed, I made a youtube video explaining it. See it below.
Download the Excel Workbook
Click here to download the workbook. The file works best in Excel 2007 or above. Try the Excel 2003 version if you prefer.
Now your turn,
Go ahead and download the original data. Make your own visualization of World Education Rankings and post it using comments. I am waiting 🙂
Learn more Excel Magic
If the above chart feels like magic, you will be wowed by these additional resources:
- Excel Dynamic Charts – Techniques & Downloads
- Visualization Principles – Making Better Charts
- Visualization Projects – Kickass Excel Magic
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