Over at PTS Blog, my dear friend & charting guru, Jon Peltier has an interesting post on using dot plots to visualize Murders & Suicides data by US States. Here is a sample of the charts he recommends for such data.
If you are curious how he made these charts, well, he used dot plot chart utility to create them.
Not that murders & suicides fascinate me, but I wanted to play with this data myself and see how we can visualize it. So I emailed Jon and asked him to share the raw data. Being a lovely chap Jon is, he immediately sent me the data. So here we are, playing with gory data on a Friday.
Suicides & Murders by US States – An Interactive Excel Chart
Here is a demo of the chart I came up with.
Thinking behind this chart
We see this type of data all the time. 2 or more metrics by a dimension like State, Product group, Country, Web Page or Customer. In this case, as you can guess, there is very little co-relation between murders and suicides by state. While we want to visualize them separately, we also want to keep the overall context together.
Since Jon already provided a lot of interesting options, I went with the interactive charts so that you can sort and view the data in any way you want.
How is this chart constructed?
Lets only look at the most important bits of the construction here. It is your homework to breakdown this file and understand how it works.
1. Arranging the data
The data is arranged by states in rows and murders & suicides in columns. I have added few extra columns to calculate murders per suicide and suicides per murder.
2. Sorting the data on-demand
This is the tricky part. I have used COUNTIF formula to sort the list. Learn how to sort a list of values using formulas [More on sorting values].
3. Visualizing the sorted data
I have used in-cell charts for this. Read more about in-cell dot plots and how to develop them in Excel.
4. Other nice stuff that you see in the chart
I used conditional formatting icons to highlight the column & show sort direction. Also, I used conditional formatting top 10 rule to highlight top 5 items in each column.
Download this chart & play with it
Click here to download the Suicides & Murders by US States – Interactive Excel Workbook and play with it. Examine the formulas in “suicides vs. murders” sheet to understand how the workbook is put-together.
How would you have visualized this information?
I am more interested in knowing how you would have visualized this data. Go ahead and share your views & ideas with us using comments. If you feel adventurous, go ahead and make a chart and email me at chandoo.d @ gmail.com. I will be glad to learn from you.
Go ahead and share.
More Excel Charting Tutorials
- Visualizing Survey Results with In-cell Panel Charts
- 50 Best Cities for Finding a Job – Excel Chart
- Understanding Flu Trends with an Interactive Excel Chart
- The Effect of Grammy on Sales of Music Albums – Interactive Excel Chart
- More on Conditional Formatting, In-cell Charting
Note: All the data in this charts is gathered from the sources mentioned here. Thanks to Jon for sharing the data with me.
15 Responses to “A Gantt Chart Alternative – Gantt Box Chart”
That's a great idea.
Maybe the planned End Date should be highlight more.
I don't know how it would look like (nor how to do it yet), but what if instead of finishing the bold line to the best case End Date, it finishes to the realistic End Date?
The idea is ok, I think other project management tools have this, already? Maybe not.
Gantt charts in my view are about the signal most unless thing in the world, theres no way you can look at one thats more that a little complex and understand what it's telling you. I'm going to write a diatribe on project management at some point, its one of my pet areas I think!! 😉
The issue I have with this chart Chandoo, is that Tasks need to be linked to each other, so they should inherit the uncertainty, which would mean the as you moved down chart the lines would be miles apart for later tasks, and you might have to add lots of lines for subsequent tasks to cover the various outcome of it's parents.
Having said that, for the high level board summary, it's a nice way to go, it it appeals to the management 😉
thanks Chandoo, great post.
Ross
Whoooa !!! That's a very clever idea Chandoo. I really love it.
I think i'll update my gantt project sheet with that idea soon (remember my template ?)
@ross : you can link start date to the end date of the previous task in your data. The only problem I still se is to which end date (real ? planned ? best ?) in order to have average amount of information.
If best end date, you'll tend to increase uncertainty at the end of chain, although if you link to real end date, uncertainty will be decreased too much, leading in both cases to wrong management direction.
Maybe planned till the task is finished then real will do the job ?
Hey chandoo, this looks good and this would definite add value in production planning / scheduling. Uncertainity in finishing a task is very high in production scheduling and this could give an insight or a bird eye view of possible shipments we can have....
I've always been frustrated by the limitations of gantt charts. Will definitely use this, I've always struggled with how to succinctly communicate the uncertainty of certain tasks without confusing stakeholders.
I like this, I think it's a very effective way of showing how a timeline can change and which parts of a project need close attention.
@Cyril / @Ross: I would intially link the the start date to the planned end date of the previous task, with the chart updating when a task has been completed to reflect the true end date.
Or what about giving a drop-down selection box to allow the user to see the chart based on planned/best-case/worst-case end dates?
Like the idea. Have found that Excel is more flexible than MS Project for graphical solutions. The "Best Case"\"Worst Case" metrics are theoretically appealing but once the project and\or phase commences their reliability diminishes. A chart like the above that showed Planned Start, Planned End, Replan End Start, Replan End Date, Number of Replans the Start and End Dates, and Actual would provide an active, actionable view of each task\phase. It would also highlight the areas which are riskiest.
It is always amazing how flexible excel can be.
My question is how would the chart show a scenario where the date moved up? If a task is dropped or the duration of the task is significantly reduced by applying more people or machinery to the task, the dates will move up.
The gantt chart has been around for a long time, but it is still quite useful to show progress.
Cheers,
B
I like the idea but seems bit complicated in case of long projects involving numerous activity.
Also, reading and explaining is required hence not feasible where plans are just send to audience for approval.
Cheers
SY
Great idea Chandoo,
When I was reading this idea regarding delivery dates, another thought popped into my mind, how can you show the uncertainty with MONEY!!
In this case, applies to cost management or even a normal budget, you think?
Would Box Chart and Gannt Chart help to understand the best case, middle case and worst case when money is spend or planned with these three risks are involved?
I imagine that this chart could help people who write their budgets get a better understanding of risks affecting their spending.
Peter
Chandoo,
I like it. How would you display an entry once it has been completed (actual)?
Thank you,
Matt
From what you have shown so far I think that this box Gantt chart is awesome! I think that this could be an extremely useful tool.
I can't wait to learn how to make my own charts in Excel.
Will the methods that you are going to teach us work in 2003 as well?
[...] Firday, we proposed a new chart for showing project plans. I chose an ugly name for it and called it Gantt Box [...]
You need to read Eli Goldratt's Critical Chain. The uncertainty you are looking for should be accounted for in a project buffer. Not at each task level.
Further you should spend time understanding Agile Development. This would have you plan only in 1-3week iterations. This allows you to embrace changes to work not yet started, and for your customer to re-direct your course at regular intervals (after each iteration) throughout your project. keyword search: Agile Scrum
These items will show you that you are solving a tracking problem for something that you can entirely avoid!
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