We, analysts take pride in the fact that we tell stories. But what if you have a boss, client or colleague who wouldn’t buy the story?
This is a problem we face often. Let’s say your boss has stubborn opinion about something, like more advertising leads to more sales. You know the data doesn’t support this theory. But how do you change your boss’ mind?
Here is an interesting way, showcased in NY Times recently.
Changing stubborn opinions with visualizations – 3 step process:
Assuming we are talking about ad spend vs. sales example:
- Ask your boss to draw a line that (s)he thinks to be true.
- Then show the line from original data (or observations).
- Tell your boss how accurate / wrong his(her) line is.
This technic can be very persuasive if you make it interactive.
For more on how NY Times implemented it, check out this page:
How family income affects children’s college chances
Your thoughts please:
Here are 2 questions for you:
- How do you change someone’s mind using data?
- How would you implement these concepts in Excel?
Go ahead and share your thoughts in the comments section.
I have a stubborn opinion that only 1% people who read articles on Chandoo.org leave comments. Change my mind. 🙂
11 Responses to “MLB Pitching Stats Dashboard in Excel+VBA by our VBA Class Student”
Hey Dan,
Thanks a lot... this is too good 🙂
Awesome stuff Dan! very impressed..
Thanks guys.
Some nice ideas in there, thanks for sharing. I noticed the list with teams has a missing value though ('Arizona Diamondbacks'). Also when manipulating Pivot Tables with VBA you should be really careful not to try to select a value that isn't in the Pivot Table, if you do all hell breaks loose 🙂 That's not the case here but just some advise as I learned the hard way...
Ah.....ya caught me.
dnrTeamName drives both the charts and the drop down list. It refers to:
=OFFSET(PvtTeams!$A$6,0,0,COUNTA(PvtTeams!$A$6:$A$40),1)
If you change A6 to A5, it fixes that little issue.
A better question though, who actually cares about the Arizona Diamondbacks?
🙂
Excellent post. Thanks
Great job, Dan! Thanks a million!
[...] MLB Pitching Statistics Dashboard [...]
Gr8 work Dan
Hi,
I downloaded file, but looks like everything is in xml. Was there suppose to be excel file as well?
Thanks!
I'm late to the party, but seeing this file in action and studying the underlying data in this Excel file has been AWESOME. I have TONS of new ideas to implement in my work files now. THANK YOU Dan and Chandoo!