Is this a FIFA worldcup of late goals? Lets ask Excel

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Just like millions of viewers around the world, I too have been spending hours watching FIFA world cup football matches on TV. I don’t like spending hours watching TV. But when its FIFA world cup time (which is once every 4 years), I am glued to the idiot box. Blame it on PaWaRa, my school teacher in 8th grade who instilled this passion.

So while watching the match day before yesterday (it was Holland vs. Chile), the commentator said, “This has been a world cup of late goals” as both teams maintained 0-0 until 77 minute mark when Leroy Fer scored a goal for Holland.

That got me thinking,

Is this really a world cup of late goals?

But I quickly brushed away the thought to focus on the match.

Later yesterday, I went looking and downloaded all the goal data for 2006, 2010 & 2014 FIFA world cup matches (2014 data for first 36 matches).

Lets examine the hypothesis “2014 has been a world cup of late goals”.

Attempt 1: Distribution of goals on 90 minute timeline

There have been 147 goals in 2006, 145 goals in 2010 and 117 goals in 2014 (as of 24th June, 2014). Out of all these goals, only 5 goals were scored after the 90 minute mark. So I ignored these 5 goals for our analysis.

Also, I assumed that any goals scored in injury time are part of the 45th minute or 90th minute mark (for simplicity).

One more: I have included data only up to 23rd of June, 2014 – so only first 108 goals of this edition are considered. This reflects accurately the moment commentator made that remark.

Lets see the chart.

Distribution of goals in fifa worldcup (2006, 2010 & 2014) by time - All goals

Each dot depicts a goal. The dots are filled with semi-transparent color, so we can see the density of goals at each point of the 90 minute timeline.

As you can see, there is no clear pattern of late goals in 2014.

While we could see higher density of dots in first half of 2006 & 2010 editions, that can be attributed to having full data vs. partial data (for 2014).

Attempt 2: % of goals scored in each 15 minute block

May be if we look at % of goals scored in each 15 minute block, we can conclude something.

Distribution of goals in FIFA worldcup - All goals + 15 minute blocks

This gives an indication that 2014 world cup indeed has slow first half. But then you also see conflicting proof with more goals scored in last 30 minutes in 2006 & 2010 editions.

Attempt 3: What if we consider only first 100 goals in each world cup

Lets remove some noise. The commentator said this has been a world cup of late goals. If we consider only first 100 goals (ie first 30 odd matches) in each world cup may be we can see how 2014 fares compared to 2010 & 2006 editions.

Goal distribution - FIFA worldcup - first 100 goals in 2006, 2010 & 2014 editions

Here too the chart does not reveal much. If anything, we can conclude that 2006 has clear pattern of high number of goals in first & last 30 mins.

While 2014 has high density in the last 30 mins, it has good distribution throughout the 90 minutes.

Attempt 4: Lets consider only the first goal of each match

I guess the impression of slowness is created if you have to wait a lot of time to see the first goal in any match. After that usually things pick-up.

So what if we consider only the first goal times in each match.

This is what we get.

Goal distribution - only first goal in each match - FIFA worldcup - 2006, 2010 & 2014.

Now this is clear. You can see that 2014 has high density in first half. Remember, for 2014 only 36 matches data is considered where as 2010 & 2006 have 64 matches data.

But we can also see the high density of goals in first half for 2006.

If you look at the average wait time for first goal, 2006 is the least with 30 mins and 2014 is in second place.

So if any, we could say 2010 was the world cup of late goals.

Attempt 5: Cumulative % of goals by minute

If a particular world cup has many late goals, then it will show thru when we plot cumulative goal distribution (as a %).

Here is what we get.

Cumulative distribution of goals in FIFA worldcup - 2006, 2010 & 2014 editions

From this you can see that 2014 line lags behind 2006 & 2010 for first 60 minutes, before climbing to top place.

This does indicate that 2014 has a lot of late goals.

But the difference is negligible, so we cannot really say much.

What do you think?

I do feel that some of the matches are slow to watch. But this is purely because I have been looking forward to the world cup and could not wait for the action.

What do you think? Do you think this has been a world cup of late goals?

Also, tell me what you think about this analysis? Wow or meh?

About the data

Thanks to Soccer Worldcups & Wikipedia from where I obtained this data.

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23 Responses to “Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA”

  1. sam says:

    Its possible to display up to 4 text values.

    Have a look at the screen shot of an example that I had posted way back at the EHA and figure out how its done !

    http://tinypic.com/r/muzywk/6

  2. ruve1k says:

    With Excel 2010 you can use Conditional Formatting to apply custom number formats which can display text. (In older versions you can only modify text color and cell background color, but not number formats.) Using CF allows for an even larger number of different display values.

  3. soumya says:

    Hey,
    Thanks, this helps. But how do you do it for multiple values where there is a huge amount of non repeating  text? 

  4. [...] Pivot Tables take tables of data and allow the user to summarise and consolidate the data at the same time. This is a great and very fast method of analysis but is restricted to handling mathematical functions on the value field resulting in numerical summaries. – read more [...]

  5. […] Read more here: Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA […]

  6. Jon Gali says:

    There is a very good way actually for handling text inside values area.
    First you create a special column on the very left side and call it ID, and put unique ID (numbers only), and then create a pivot table with:

    Row Labels and Column labels as you like, and in the Values labels use the unique ID number.

    Move the unique ID number (copy paste) somewhere to the right and use vlookup to load the data you need using the ID as reference.

    It is a bit longer way but for me it works perfectly to combine values as you like in any moment.

    hope helps.

    Regards,

    Jon

  7. Linda says:

    Thank you! I finally understand pivot tables thanks to your clear, concise explanations and examples.

  8. Danzi says:

    Good Day. This is exactly what i have been looking for. However when i try it on my pivot table or even when i try to recreate this exercise using the sample worksheet, i get this error:

    "Microsoft Excel cannot use the number format you typed. Try using one of the built-in number formats."

  9. Hiren says:

    pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
    NAME PAN AMOUNT
    MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
    MR.Y AAABR1258C
    MR.A CFVDE2458T
    MR.Z AAVCR12548C
    MR.X AAAAC1254T
    MR.Z AADCD245T

  10. Hiren says:

    pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
    NAME PAN AMOUNT
    MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
    MR.Y AAABR1258C 1000
    MR.A CFVDE2458T 2000
    MR.Z AAVCR12548C 5451
    MR.X AAAAC1254T 45564
    MR.Z AADCD245T 4500
    how to get pivot tabe so i get PAN no. against Name.

  11. Letitgo says:

    I found an easy way to get text values in pivot table.

    I create an other worksheet in wich each cell has a formula that copy the pivot table. The trick is that the formula does a lookup for the numbers in the pivot table.

    The formula looks like that:
    =IF(ISNUMBER(table!A1);VLOOKUP(table!A1;Code!$A$1:$B$65;2);IF(ISBLANK(table!A1);" ";table!A1))

    Code is a worksheet where there is a liste of text /numbers correspondance.

    As a bonus The new sheet is easier to format

    Additional trick:
    In my case, i encoded differents codeid with a power(2, codeId-1) so that summing then is equivalent to concatenate them.

    1-A
    2-B
    4-C
    8-D

    yields :

    5 - AC
    14 - BCD

  12. Tushar says:

    Hi
    I want to ask if pivot can display dates in pivot field. As in a column i have customers and in row different items i want to know there last purchase date. anyone help in this??

  13. Tushar says:

    Hello Guys, Need your help
    I am doing some analysis of the cycle time of the product i.e how much time a product takes from manufacturing to the central warehouse.
    I have batch numbers for the product and against them i have to pull out the diff. dates
    Like the base date is from where the manufacturing start. So i have the batch number,against it's manuf. date. Now i have to pull out the date when it was quality released.
    I have the quality released data but the data have duplicates, like i will have two dates or may be three for the same batch. So my main objective is to pull out the date which is latest among them.

    BATCH NO. DATE of Mfg. DATE of Quality release
    A1 12/4/2014 (HERE I HAVE TO PULL value)

    Next Sheet
    BATCH NO. DATE of Quality Release
    A1 14/5/2014
    a2 23/5/2016
    A1 12/5/2014
    A1 13/6/2014

    From this sheet i have to pull up the latest date format of date here is dd/mm/yyy

    TIA

  14. […] needed to present text instead of counts in a pivot table value column. Here is an excellent resource for Excel manipulation, in addition to an overview of pivot […]

  15. Kyrene says:

    This is great thank you.

  16. Rabiul says:

    Wow!!! Excellent!! It helped me a lot.

  17. I am developing training tracking sheet for 200 employees with training completed date. Each employee will be attending 25 courses. How to indicate actual dates in pivot table value field.

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