Last week, I asked my email newsletter readers to submit “one data analysis problem you are struggling with”. We called it BYOD – Bring your own data. More than 100 people have emailed various interesting (and often very difficult) problems. This week (between 16th of February to 20th of February), let’s take a look at some of these problems and solve them.
This problem is sent by Fiona.
Situation: Our commissions are growing way faster than revenues
Let’s say you are looking revenues & sales commissions of your company for last few years. The data looks like this:
And you want to highlight the fact that commissions are growing faster than revenues.
So you plot YoY growth rates for revenues & commissions.
Problem: The chart of YoY growth rates is not convincing
Take a look at the chart. It doesn’t convey the message that we want. At best it says “revenue growth is less than commission growth”
How to convey the message “Commission growth is a problem for us”?
Option 1. Use indexed charts
When comparing 2 sets of values (that are in different order of magnitudes) over time, we can use indexed charts. They can tell the story of how the values have changed over time clearly.
Here is the indexed chart for our data:
How to create this chart?
Simple. Just follow below steps.
- Calculate index values. Assume first year value for each series as 100 (so revenues = 100, commissions=100 in year 2010)
- For next year, calculate the value as this year value / first year value
- Plot these indexed values on a line chart
- Adjust the line chart axis minimum to 1 (or 100%) if all values are >1
- You are done
Option 2. Visualize ‘for every % in revenue growth, commission grows by…”
We can calculate what is the change in commission growth rate for every % growth in revenues & plot this. This will depict the situation in a powerful & dramatic fashion, like this:
How to create this chart?
Even simpler. Just do these steps:
- Calculate % values by dividing YoY commission growth with YoY revenue growth
- Plot this as a column chart
- Draw a line at 100%
- Add a text box at this line and write “Ideal” on it.
- You are done.
Download Revenue vs. Commission growth charts
Click here to download the example workbook. Examine the formulas & chart settings to learn better.
How would you present this information?
My favorite approach is to use indexed charts. They are designed for this exact purpose.
What about you? How would you visualize this kind of information? What charting techniques will you use to get your message across? Please share your inputs in the comments section.
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.