During last week, an alert reader of our blog, Jørgen emailed me a link to “How Trump happened“. It is an interactive visualization by Wall Street Journal. Jørgen asked me if we could replicate the visualization in Excel. My response: “Making a new chart in Excel? Hell yeah!”
First let’s take a look at the WSJ visualization:
You may go to WSJ’s How Trump happened page or see a quick video below. Make sure you are seeing the WSJ link on a computer or tablet. On mobiles it changes to a bar chart.
If you have trouble watching the video, click here.
As you can see, the visualization starts with one hundred voters in each group and shows how they are divided by various issues. It is a very interesting piece of story telling. That said, I am not a fan of it for below reasons:
- Misleading: The visualization suggests that some of the voters who said “YES” for one issue are saying “NO” to another. For example, 40% Trump voters have >$75,000 income. But when you go next issue (Do you have college degree?), you see 2 % voters moving to NO group. This suggests that out of 40% who have >$75k income, only 2% do not have college degree. But this is not true. The groups having $75k income and college degree may be completely different (or 100% overlapped).
- Time consuming: We need too much time to digest 10 issues at hand. What more, We are unable to compare issues vs. candidates because of we can’t see everything in one go.
- Poorly named: Last but not least, the visualization is wrongly titled. It doesn’t really explain how Trump happened? It never mentions what motivated the voters to side with Trump, whether Trump’s own campaign promises / manifesto align with the issues these voters worry about. For most of the issues, there are no significant differences between 3 groups of candidates. So how a voter decided to go with Trump is never explained.
Okay, so how do we create this in Excel?
We can’t. At least, I can’t make a 100% replica of the WSJ chart in Excel. So I went with next closest approximation. Here is the basic approach:
- We create a bubble chart with 3 bubbles – top, bottom and move.
- Top bubble shows how many people answered YES for a particular issue
- Bottom bubble shows how many answered NO
- Move bubble shows people moving from one group to another as we switch between issues.
- We fill the bubbles with people shapes and tile them.
- Whenever we switch to a new issue,
- We calculate the new top & bottom bubble sizes
- We figure out the move bubble size and movement direction (ie top to bottom or bottom to top?)
- In case of top to bottom movement,
- Use VBA to gradually reduce the top bubble while increasing the move bubble
- Change the move bubble’s y value from top to bottom
- Increase the bottom bubble size while reducing the move bubble size gradually
- Do the opposite in case of bottom to top movement.
- Use a slicer to capture issue selection and trigger animation VBA.
Here is a quick demo of this approach:
Watch this quick video. Click here if you can’t see it.
An alternative visualization – Trump Tower chart
Let me confess a thing. I don’t like the bubble chart approach. It feels clumsy and complex. So I wanted to try something different. How about using two ranges of cells and simply filling them up based on how many people said YES and NO. When we switch to a different issue, we simply move the filled cells from one range to another.
I call this approach, the trump tower chart.
First, take a look at it:
How is the Trump Tower constructed?
Oh, simple. We just go to the bank, take a $ 100 mn loan, go to city council and convince them to allocate acres of land, construct a big, luxurious building, sell the condos for insane prices and bag the profit.
I am kidding. Don’t rush to the bank. We can use Excel to make the chart. Here is the approach in a nut shell.
- Create two ranges of cells: top & bottom each with 100 cells
- Using conditional formatting, fill up the top range with number of people saying YES and bottom range with number of people saying NO.
- When user switches to a new issue, using VBA:
- Calculate the new Top & Bottom sizes
- Calculate the direction of movement
- If voters are going from top to bottom, for each voter moving:
- Reduce the top range size by 1
- Create moving illusion by filling up blank space between ranges
- Increase bottom range size by 1
- Do the opposite if we are going from bottom to top
- Set up a scroll bar to enable issue selection. Link the scrollbar to Animate VBA macro
Isn’t there a better way to visualize this data?
Let’s be honest. The original WSJ chart and both our interactive + animated replicas are not the ideal way to understand this data. These are complex – both to create and read. As we always say, simplicity trumps. Or as Trump says, “Let’s make charting great again”. So let me present a chart that is amazingly clear and very easy to make.
A bar chart will do:
As you can guess, a simple bar chart is enough to understand this data. Should you wish to highlight polarizing issues, you can use conditional formatting to highlight them. See below image:
Download “How Trump happened” Excel workbook:
Click here to download the how trump happened workbook. It contains all three visualizations. Please enable macros to enjoy them. Examine the code.
So which one is your favorite?
While I had a lot of fun building the bubble chart & Trump tower versions, I think the bar chart is most useful version.
What about you? Which chart do you like most? How would you visualize this data? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments area.
Build your charting muscle…
Visual story telling is a very compelling medium. Learn how to build awesome charts using Excel. Check out below tutorials and examples:
28 Responses to “2010 Calendar – Excel Template [Downloads]”
[...] Download and print the calendars today. You can add notes to individual dates or complete … [...] Uni Ego / Free 2010 Calendar – Download and Print Year 2010 Calendar today [...]
Any chance on a 2016 calendar?
Afternoon,
I have one similar calander that I added conditional formatting to so that I could highlight any planned factory holidays. I think i "borrowed" the formula from another calander so I won't post it here.
I also added week numbers to it using the formula =WEEKNUM(MAX(C6:I6)) Where C6:I6 is the range of dates in that give week. It works fine on most of the months but return strange values on other months (Week 6 in October?) I can't see any logic behind why it does this.
Any suggestions for an alternative formula to give the week numbers?
Regards,
William
Hi Chandoo,
I've added a new feature on your spreadsheet.
This control can be useful for all the sheets where you need to check dates.
Cheers
http://cid-69a78592a23a8438.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/2010-calendar%5E_Miguel.xls
Hi Chandoo,
Nice calendar.
Till now whichever calendar I saw in Excel, it contained only the outline sheet.
Good to see monthly views and the mini view too.
Liked the mini view much. 🙂
-Nimesh
@William: This weeknum may be because the input dates to max are not properly formatting as excel dates.
Good tip on the conditional formatting and holidays btw...
@Migueal: Now that is super awesome. This is the reason why I love to blog. Readers will always one up me with such cool alternatives. Thank you for sharing this with us.
@Nimesh: You are welcome 🙂
is it possible to get the Notes section on the outline page to display the notes added to the month page for a specific date?
So if you add thing for January 2nd, and then select January 2nd those notes appear on the outline page
@Shish... You can do that using some formula magic. I would not recommend pushing excel to that as outlook / google calendar / icalc etc. do exactly that much more elegantly.
[...] Perpetual Excel Calendar – Free Downloadable Template [...]
Happy christmas to all of you!
This is really awesome. The nicest calender I've seen for Excel. I also like Miguels version of the sheet.
Just one "feature" is missing to me. As I live in Germany - where weeks start on Monday - I'd like to change this. Could someone please give me a hint how to do this?
Thanks in advance
Jörg
Hi Chandoo, I’ve added some new features on your spreadsheet with your permission.
Check it here:
http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Calendar%5E_Pedro.xlsm
Miguel, this calendar is translated to Spanish language.
Jörg, this new approach allows us to start weeks on Monday.
Also it's possible to start weeks on Sunday if you enable Excel macros and push the arrows.
Best Regards,
Pedro.
@Pedro.. superb stuff.. thanks for sharing the file with all of us.
Hi Chandoo, for dates before March 1, 1900 our calendars are wrong.
In Microsoft Excel, DATE, EOMONTH, WEEKDAY functions return an incorrect result between Monday, January 1, 1900 and Wednesday, February 28, 1900.
See this page: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214326/en-us/
Microsoft Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year in all Excel versions.
That's the reason why our calendar versions only work from March, 1, 1900 until December, 31, 9999.
Your comments are welcome.
Pedro.
@Pedro.. Thanks for pointing that out. wow... This reminds me of the Joel Spolsky's first BillG review - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html (read it, I am sure you would love it.) when Bill out of blue asks about date time implementations for VBA (which Joel is the program manager for...)
Thanks for sharing the URL too... Here is a specially made, chocolate sprinkled, extra fluffy donut for you 🙂
Hi Chandoo, thanks a lot for the donut but I prefer it without chocolate!
Always it's good to know a little history of Excel.
The Joel Spolsky’s last BillG Excel review was about the "Hall of Tortured Souls"
(See this Excel 95 Easter Egg here: http://www.eeggs.com/items/719.html)
Do not miss the humor!
@Chandoo.. I just return with a new calendar version.
http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/calendar-pedrowave.xltx
It helped me to practice conditional formatting, formulas to show check boxes, data validation drop down list, find out Thanksgiving Day's date for any year, how to find dates of public holidays using Excel, all reading your wonderful posts!
Perpetual Calendar Spanish version starting weeks on Monday:
http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/calendario-pedrowave.xltx
Main characteristics:
- Not macros.
- Select a year from 1900 to 9999 with a dropdown listbox.
- All date fields with the real date format.
- Easy language change of day of the week and month names because are also dates.
- Hide Saturdays and/or Sundays.
- Week starting on Sunday or Monday.
- Week and month numbers.
- Hyperlink between sheets.
- Consistent colors to Holidays, Diary and Events dates.
- Easy change of Holidays by country.
- Include 80 World Days and you can add more.
- A diary with my birthday and 50 more programable appointments.
- Check box to hide individual dates or all.
- Holidays, diary and events text are showed on each month's sheet.
- Ranges defined with Name Manager variables.
I'll appreciate if you make me some suggestions to improve this calendar.
Pedro.
Please, I need help!
I like all calendar from Pedro, thank you for them. Let me show my problem:
I have 2 excel cells (for example AE12 and AE13) which mean the starting and the ending date of my duty. I need a macro to insert sheets with label YEAR. MONTH (for example 2010. August or similar) with the proper datas between the two dates. Is it possible?
Thank you for reading me and sorry about my terribel english! 🙂
Hello Pedro,
Thanks so much for the modified calendar template. I love the extra functionality you added. Is there any way you could upload an unlocked version? I wanted to change some of the comments and data validation so I could use it for one of my applications.
As for feedback on potential improvements, with all the additions you made the file runs pretty slow. I'm sure this has to do with all the interconnectivity between the various tabs, but if there is a way to use less memory via more efficient formulas or something else I think this would make it easier to use. I have a brand new computer and with it running alone the response was pretty slow. One of the changes I'm making is changing the order of the months to match my company's fiscal year, so maybe something to automate a change like that could be useful.
Cheers,
Peter
Peter, my calendars are unlocked but you need Excel 2007 and 2010 versions to open them.
Now I return with a new Programmable Task Calendar:
http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.office.live.com/view.aspx/.Public/Calendario%20de%20Tareas.xlsx
Wath an introductory video here:
http://pedrowave.blogspot.com/2010/10/programmable-task-calendar.html
This new calendar allows to select the start month to match the school and fiscal year.
This is great stuff Chandoo and company
Wanted to know if someone had built something similar
I need to store one Excel Sheet on this calendar that has all the holidays
US Holidays appear in RED
UK Holidays appear in Blue
Meetings appear in Green
Submissions appear in Orange
Is there a way I can store the list in a separate worksheet and all the calendars get updated with this?
Thanks
[...] Calendars: Year 2010 Excel Calendar | Year 2009 Excel [...]
please tell me "how to convert Rs.10000/- in to words through excel formula
[...] is all! http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/12/11/2010-calendar-excel-template-downloads/ See more Templates at http://www.vertex42.com/ Share this:Like this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]
Greetings,
Thanks for this wonderful excel vacation tracker. I notice that the tracker only has three months November, December and January 2015, however, I would like to add the other ten months for 2014. Can you please instruct me on how I can add the other months?
Thanking you in advance.
Hi Chandoo,
Calendar: can this be printed as single sheet 8.5x11 inch per month
kanu
@Kanu
Yes,
You can resize it to fit
WOW! I just searching some of like this, that help me.
Thank you for sharing.