A few days back, WSJ ran a visualization titled “What’s your pay gap?” It depicts median pay gap between female & male workers in 422 different professions in USA. The chart uses fish eye effect to highlight the selected profession. See below demo to understand the effect.
Discussion: Is the Fish Eye Effect worth it?
In this context, fish eye effect is useless. As we have too much data, the fish eye effect becomes mere eye candy and draws attention away from important matters at hand.
That said, it is a cool idea to use with smaller data sets.
Implementation: Fish Eye Effect in Excel
Out of curiosity, I wanted to implement the fish eye effect in Excel. We can highlight selected dots using simple algebra. To stretch the chart elements to left & right requires VBA. Since VBA creates portability issues, let’s focus on the algebra based fish eye effect.
Here is a quick demo of the final outcome.
Assuming you have a bunch of X & Y values (Profession & Salary in this case), to generate the new X&Y values with fish eye effect for a particular X value (say X1),
- Define gap as an integer value, indicating the gap to either side of highlighted value at X1. For the above example, Gap = 10.
- Calculate scaling factor for the left side of Fish Eye as (X1-gap)/X1
- Scaling factor for right side of Fish Eye as (Max X – X1 – gap)/(Max X – X1)
- Use these scaling factors to calculate new X values for all dots.
- Create a scatter plot with these new X values and Y values.
- Apply special formatting to X1 & Y1 values thru another series.
- Set up a form control or VBA to change X1.
- Your interactive fish eye chart is ready.
Alternative: Closing the gaps in Pay Gap Fish Eye chart
Okay, as you can see both original and Excel implementation of Fish Eye charts are mediocre. So let’s improve them. For this type of data, we can use interactive tables so that users can filter, sort and highlight the data any way they want. This allows for flexible exploration of data.
Here is a quick demo of the interactive table style visualization of Pay Gap data.
Interactive Pay Gap Analysis Table – Construction summary
- Construct 5 pivot tables, one for each sort order.
- Create a slicer on Profession Category and link it to all 5 pivots.
- Set up a form control to figure out sort order (and dynamically fetch one of the 5 pivot table data sets, using CHOOSE formula)
- Fetch 20 rows of selected pivot table data (use scroll bar position to determine which 20 rows)
- Apply conditional formatting to the 20 rows based on criteria specified.
- Calculate summary information and display it at the top.
Here are the key ideas used during construction of this:
- Scrollable KPI Dashboard – for scrollable list.
- CHOOSE formula – for creating dynamic named range
- Conditional Formatting – for highlighting professions
- Slicers for filtering a profession
- Form controls for sorting & highlight option selection
Video: Fish Eye vs. Interactive Table – Walkthru
Here is a quick video walk thru of both approaches along with some commentary and explanation.
You can watch the video on our YouTube Channel too.
Download the workbook
Click here to download the Fish Eye effect workbook. It contains both fish eye and interactive table visualizations. Examine the calculations tab for all the formulas.
How would you visualize this data?
Do you like the Fish Eye effect chart? How would you visualize this data? Please share your thoughts and implementations in the comments.
More case studies
Check out below tutorials and case studies to learn how to visualize complex data in Excel.
30 Responses to “Great News: Chandoo becomes MVP”
Congratulations! It's well deserved. 🙂
This is amazing. Hearty congratulations and a rocking new year ahead!!!
Congrats! I have learnt alot from your site... and the most important is learning how to achieve the most with the simplest concepts.
Thanks for the excel calendar. Is it possible to get a simple big fonted calendar printable on an A4 size paper without any distracive notes or visuals? BTW, I have already signed up for your newsletter. With warm regards and
Gratefully yours
50+ year old CHarish.
Hey Chandoo,
Great to hear that. Congratulations! The best new year gift, I would say. Keep it up, u've been doing extraordinary work for the excel users community.
Regards,
Pankaj Verma
Congrats dude... fantastic news!
congratulations! your site is great, this is well deserved
Rich
I recently found your site, I visit many. The tips that you provide are in the top 1% of all the sites I visit. Keep on Excelling.
Arnold
South Africa
Congratulations, Chandoo! That's a great way to start the year and make the PHD even better.
Congratulations, Chandoo.
Your site is one of most useful on the net. Happy new year and lot of ideas you will present for us.
Congrats.
Just read your name in an email from Abhishek. Well deserved.
Congratulations, and Happy New Year.
Greetings from Rio de Janeiro my friend! You trully deserve it!
Nive way to start 2009! Keep up the good work!
FC
That was quite forseeable , so you have now really got your PhD in excel.
Anyways Chandoo you have made excel a real Fun doo
I will like you to write some more on INDEX and MATCH function in near future.
@Hey Chandoo ! Congrates....
Ab to treat mangta hai !
Well deserved Chandoo!!
Congrat's!! Very well deserved 🙂
i always browsed mr.excel and used to see MVP writtne below names of people who used to solve queries in excel forum there......i just used to admire as to what they have special in them that they are MVP......
but now i got my answer...............u deserve it man..........
@All: thanks everyone 🙂
Congratulations Chandoo, nice job!
Chandoo,
A well deserved recognition and a good start to the New Year. Continue your good work.
Subbu
Many Congratulations.
You deserve a Ph.D. 🙂
congrats.....
Congrats dude. Rock on!
[...] charting community in 2007 and has been growing strongly ever since. In year 2009, I have received the MVP award from Microsoft. Just few days back I have become a dad [...]
Respected sir,
I am impressed!.... Good job done.. Keep it up...
Sir, How to be a MVP certified person. What level of knowledge is required for it? send me links if possible.
Please reply...
Regards,
Dipak Khalasi.
Dipak -
The first thing you need to cultivate is the ability to search the web effectively. You could start by Googling "Microsoft MVP".
[...] boy and girl which has been made hectic and incredibly fun ever since to their life.He has been awarded MVP status in 2009 by Microsoft(and renewed in 2010,2011 & 2012).His MVP profile is here.If you want to contact him direct then [...]
Congrats Chandoo!!
[…] Chandoo becomes MVP […]