Whenever we deal with large amounts of data, one of the goals for analysis is,
How is this data distributed?
This is where a Box plot can help. According to Wikipedia, a box plot is a convenient way of graphically depicting groups of numerical data through their five-number summaries: the smallest observation (sample minimum), lower quartile (Q1), median (Q2), upper quartile (Q3), and largest observation (sample maximum) [more]
Quartile?!? What is that like?
When we say $ 39,000 is the lower quartile of salaries paid in Acme inc. it means, 25% of people make less than or equal to $39,000
Like that Median (Q2) means half the samples are lower than median & the other are more than median.
Example Box Plot
Here is an example box plot depicting salaries of all analysts in USA as per our recent Excel Salary Survey.
The box shows distribution of middle half of data (salaries) while the lines (called as whiskers) show minimum and maximum salaries.
As you can see, 50% of the analysts make between $46,000 to $75,000 while the min is $10k and max is $160k.
Why use Box plots?
Box & whisker plots are an excellent way to show distribution of your data without plotting all the values. They are easy to understand. We can use them whenever we have lots of data or dealing with samples drawn from larger population.
Creating Box plots in Excel – 9 step tutorial
Despite their utility, Excel has no built-in option to make a box plot. Of course you can make a 3D pie chart or stacked horizontal pyramid chart. Lets save them for your last day at work and understand how to create box plots in Excel.
Step 1: Calculate the number summaries
Assuming your data is in list use formulas MIN, MAX & PERCENTILE to calculate summaries like below:
To calculate 25th percentile (Q1) use = PERCENTILE(list, 25%)
Step 2: Make a bar chart from Q1, Median & Q3
Just select the 25th percentile, median & 75th percentile values and create a bar chart.Make sure that your chart shows 3 different colored bars not 3 bars in one color.
Step 3: Set series overlap to 100%
Select any bar, press CTRL+1 (right click > format series) and adjust series overlap to 100%
Step 4: Adjust series order so that you can see all the bars
If you cannot see all the bars, right click on chart, click on “Select data”.
Now, adjust the series order using arrow keys so that you can see all the bars. See this demo:
Step 5: Make 25th percentile (Q1) bar invisible
Select the bar corresponding to Q1 and fill it with white color. If you make it transparent, it will not work. So make it all white.
Step 6: Add error bars to Q1 & Q3 series
Just select Q1 (25th percentile) bar and add error bar (any type) from layout ribbon.
Repeat for Q3 series as well.
Step 7: Set up error values in your data
Add an extra column in your data area and use simple formulas to calculate error values, like below:
Step 8: Set up custom error values for Q1 & Q3
Select the error bar for Q1 (25th percentile) and,
- Press CTRL+1 to format them
- Enable only minus (negative) error bar with no cap.
- Select Custom as error amount and point to the calculated value.
Repeat for Q3, but choose positive error bar instead.
Step 9: Format the box plot to your taste
Remove any legend, axis, labels that you do not need. Change colors to suit your taste and mood. Make the whiskers subtle and knock off the grid lines. You are good to go.
Making Box plots interactive
Since box plots are very useful to understand distribution of values, we use them in dashboards etc. Naturally, you are interested to know how values are distributed for various things.
In this example, we may want to know how analyst salaries compare with manager salaries.
To make things complicated, we have 10 different job types, thus enabling 45 possible comparisons (10c2)
This is where interactive box plots can help. See this demo to understand:
Interactive Box plot in Excel – a Demo
How to make interactive box plot in Excel
Construction of box plot is same as mentioned above. The difference is in adding interactivity.
Step 1: Use combo box form controls to capture comparison criteria
Excuse the tongue twister. Using Developer ribbon > Insert > Form controls, add 2 combo box controls and point them to the list of job types.
Lets assume that these combo boxes are linked to cells D1, D2.
[Related: Introduction to Excel Form Controls]
Step 2: Calculate 5 number summaries using MINIF, MAXIF and PERCENTILEIF formulas
Don’t rush to type the formulas yet. There is no such formula as MINIF (or MAXIF or PERCENTILEIF). Assuming your list of jobs are in joblist, write
=MIN(IF(joblist=”Analyst”, list_of_values,””))
and press CTRL+Shift+Enter
Using MAX(IF(…)) and PERCENTILE(IF(…)) you can calculate remaining 4 summaries.
Step 3: Based on combo box selection, fetch any two sets of values
Using INDEX formula, we can fetch values corresponding to each combo box selection to a set of cells, like this:
Step 4: Connect these values to your box plots
That simple!
Step 5: Format and interact
Format the charts. Play with combo boxes to interactively compare one set of distribution with another. Show it to your boss or client and see them fall off a chair.
Download Box plot tutorial workbook
Click here to download the workbook containing these examples. Play with it. Check out various formulas and chart settings. Learn.
Do you use Box plots?
I love box plots. I have used them several times. Few examples are here: Excel age survey results, Gantt box chart and more.
In our Excel salary survey contest too, many people have used box plots to clearly compare compensation composition. Checkout the entries by Aditya, Allred, Anchalee, Anup, Bryan, Jeanmarc, Joerg, Kostas, Luke, Michael, Nathan, Sergey and Vishwanath. Especially Jeanmarc used interactive version of box plots to allow comparison on demand.
What about you? Do you use Box plots often? How do you prepare them? What is your experience like? Please share using comments.
Create Box plots often? Use Jon’s Add-in
If you need to create box plots often and find the above process tedious, then please consider getting a copy of Jon Peltier’s Box Plot add-in for Excel. It works like a charm and produces what you need. All in a few clicks. Click here to know more.
PS: Link to Jon’s add-in is an affiliate link. It means, when you buy it from Jon thru this link, I will get a few bucks too. I recommend it because I know it is awesome and perfect for box plots.
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.