Chandoo: Did somebody just chart?
Jeff: Yes. Yes I did. More on that later. But first, let’s take a sniff of Mike Alexander’s outliers, shall we?
Over at the bacon bits blog, Mike has an interesting post on using something called the Tukey Method to identify outliers in a data set. That article is worth reading for John Walkenbach’s comment alone.
Here’s Mike’s sample dataset, with the data points identified as outliers highlighted in orange:
The Tukey method that Mike blogs about constructs a fence around “reasonable” readings, and that fence is described mathematically by an arbitrary numerical factor:
(Quartile 1) – (Arbitrary_Factor × IQR)
(Quartile 3) + (Arbitrary_Factor × IQR)
Typically a factor of 1.5 is used. Check out Mike’s blog for a detailed explanation of this stuff.
That’s all good, but it also produces a fairly arbitrary cut-off, depending on what factor you use. So rather than using an algorithm to determine outliers, my preference is to sort the data from lowest to highest value, then plot it and look at the resulting shape:
—Edit— Jon says in the comments:
Your line chart would be easier to read if you’d used markers. I use markers to indicate where the data actually IS, and help show that the line only ties the data together and doesn’t indicate more data, until the points are nearly touching.
Trust Jon to chart in my face. But he’s right. So here it is:
[Aside: That chart’s done in Excel 2013. What’s weird is that those markers aren’t centered on the line, but seem to sit just above it by a point or two. Whoops, Microsoft.]
And here it is with data labels, so it’s easier to see the actual values:
Some may say that the data labels are redundant, because you can gauge the values from the axis. My mature response to that is “Ffffffrrrrrt”. I like the data labels…once I’ve used the line to quickly judge what may be outliers, the labels let me confirm the jump in values without having to move my head back and forth like I’m watching Roger Federer play Andy Murry at Wimbledon.
In fact, maybe I can combine the marker with the labels, and get rid of that axis altogether:
Hey, that looks cool. Anyone going to get Tufte on me?
—Edit over—
This is akin to making a bunch of actors line up in order of shortest to tallest, and saying:
Okay…Elijah, Dominic, Billy, and Sean…you’re shortest. And by golly, you four look a lot shorter than the others. You guys can be the Hobbits.
[Aside: I recreated the below graph from one a site called SFScope. Check out the outliers at both ends, and click on the picture to visit the original]
I like this graphical approach. I think it takes less effort to visually identify outliers than to programatically identify them. For instance, let’s look at Mike’s sample data again for a moment:
Looking at this data, I visually identify pretty much the same outliers as Tukey would – points 1,2,3, 19, and 20. In addition, it looks like that 4th data point – with a value of 13 – looks like it has outlier stamped all over it too, when you see it in context of the other data.
Another benefit of plotting ranked data is that it also allows you to ask questions about interesting trends within the datapoints that clearly are not outliers. For instance, what’s the deal with the sudden ‘acceleration’ in the trend between datapoints 16 and 17 caused by? Understanding drastic changes within non-outlier points might be worth as much money to a business as understanding the outliers themselves.
Lose the horizontal axis?
Sometimes with larger datasets, that horizontal axis can be distracting, because Excel only has enough space along that axis to display the labels for every nth rank.
For instance, take the below graph, which looks at just how much money an organization receives from each of its customers by way of annual membership subscription each year:
See what I mean? You find yourself trying to decipher the trend in the data labels, and this really draws your eye away from the incredible trend shown in the graph above.
So let’s just delete them:
That’s much less distracting. Wow: many of our customers hardly subscribe to anything, and a few practically keep this place afloat!
What else can we show on a graph like this?
Sorting your data like this also lends itself to visually segmenting your customers by how much they contribute to your total revenue.
For instance, the below graph shows just how many customers it takes to account for each subsequent 25% of revenue, and what the average annual subscription within each group is. This gives you a real appreciation into just how valuable your larger customers are in comparison to smaller customers:
Wow, half our subscription revenue comes from our Key Accounts and Large Customers groups, who make up just 10% of our subscription base. Let’s be especially nice to those customers. And lots of our effort is spent in servicing small clients that don’t buy much. Can we grow their business? Should we sack some of them as customers, so we can spend that effort finding bigger ones?
Using revenue ‘buckets’ of 25% was a fairly arbitrary choice. What if we designed a chart template that let you dynamically choose different sized revenue buckets, as well as let you use more buckets if you wanted to?
For instance, looking at the above graph, it looks to me that we have a whole bunch of ‘Tiny Customers’. And we also might want to segment that group of Median customers that all have exactly the same sized subscription into a group of their own.
Well, the chart template I’ve put together for this post lets you do just that:
Wow. Jeff charted again. Man, look at all those time-wasting small accounts…they’re about as welcome as a chart in an elevator!
Note that the above graph was produced using Excel 2013. Excel 2013 automatically puts in those grey lines connecting the data lables with the series. Those are called Leader Lines. They rock.
Unfortunately, earlier versions of Excel only use leader lines for pie charts. But fear not, intrepid reader, for my chart template uses a bit of VBA to automatically puts lines in for you using shapes, if you’re using Excel 2010:
What’s cool about this template is that all the data labels are dynamic: change the ‘breakpoints’ between groups or the number of groups in the ‘Controls’ table [see screenshot below], and the details within the data labels are updated automatically. Bing!
I modified a version of Jon Peltier’s great Label Last Point routine to refresh the placement of the data labels. (Thanks, Jon). Here’s the template, so you can play around in the privacy of your own screen:
Segmenting customers by revenue contribution_V1 [Not tested in Excel 2007 or earlier]
Oh yes. I most definitely charted, boss.
Updates
—Update 1—
Prompted by some great action in the comments below, I whipped up this redesign in both gray and white:
While I like the grey, I do think it’s harder on the eyes than black text on white background. And I don’t think a grey chart would work well on say a dashboard. But that said, there’s no doubt in my mind that this chart is sexier than my original. Might look nice in the Economist. Here’s a link to the revised sample file: Segmenting-customers-by-revenue-contribution_with_Leader_Lines V1
—Update 2—
Kaiser Fung has some great ideas on how to redesign this in his post Visualizing Uneven Distributions. Go check it out, and be sure to subscribe to both his Junk Charts blog as well as his Big Data, Plainly Spoken blog. Both are gold. Both will make you a better analyst.
Added by Chandoo
If you like this chart, chances are you are going to love the below too:
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.