Imagine you work at MI5 as a HR officer. You want to find all agents who have license to kill (licence 7). Your data looks like this:
How would you go about it?
If you filter the list or use FIND() or SEARCH() formulas, you will end up with agents who also have licenses 77, 17 or not7. So how would you solve this problem?
Of course, you do what any smart person does. You summon Excel and ask it nicely by using some wicked pattern matching logic.
Finding all cells with 7 in them
Assuming the licenses are in column [licenses], you can use below formula to check if it has 7:
Step 1: Make an extra column, say [Two more commas] and use this formula.
=", "&[@licenses]&", "
Step 2: Now use below formula to find if a license has 7 in it:
=COUNTIFS([@[Two more commas]] , "* 7,*") > 0
This formula returns TRUE if [@licenses] has 7.
So how does it work?
There are three cases for licenses with 7 in them, as shown below.
Once we prefix & suffix COMMASPACE to this, we end up with a text that has the pattern:
<COMMA SPACE number><COMMA SPACE number>...
Now, we simply look for the pattern SPACE7, in this by using the * wildcard along with COUNTIFS.
=COUNTIFS([@[Two more commas]], "* 7,*")
We add a check to see if the count is greater than ZERO (ie did we find the pattern?)
So there you go. Now you can find the agent who can nab the targets.
Related: Using wildcards * ? in Excel VLOOKUP & other functions | Introduction to SUMIFS formula
Adding a few plot twists
Now, your MI5 career would be awfully boring, if there are no plot twists. So Q calls you in to her office and says, “We need a list of all agents who have any of the licenses 7, 65 or 63. Oh, while you are at it, tell me which agents have all three licenses.”
Damn you Q
the evil is you
for making me do
work I don’t want to
Damn you Q.
Added later: Okay, My James Bond knowledge is not very good. M is the boss of MI5, not Q. So let’s assume M calls you in to her office and gives you this task. As usual, you go:
Why do this M?
Everything is ho hum
and then you come
to tell my work is not yumm
Why do this M?
So you are back to your desk. Now the licenses to find are in a named range called list.
You can use COUNTIFS() pattern find logic to get the answer.
For sake of simplicity, let’s assume that you have a new column in your data table called as [Two more commas]
Does the agent have any of the licenses in list?
=SUMPRODUCT(COUNTIFS([@[Two more commas]],"* "&list&",*"))>0
The internal COUNTIFS returns an array of values, which the SUMPRODUCT simply adds up.
Does the agent have all of the licenses in list?
=SUMPRODUCT(COUNTIFS([@[Two more commas]],"* "&list&",*")) = COUNTA(list)
Now, let’s hope Q doesn’t add more plot twists. And if she does, you can always post them in the comments so internet can solve them.
Related: Introduction to Excel SUMPRODUCT function
How would you find license to kill?
I am sure COUNTIFS is not the only way to do this. So what would you do in this case? Will you use formulas / VBA or Power Query? Or something else altogether? Go ahead and share your approach in the comments section.
Note: Thanks to Brian who emailed me this problem.
14 Responses to “Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability”
I think the virtue of pie charts is precisely that they are difficult to decode. In many contexts, you have to release information but you don't want the relationship between values to jump at your reader. That's when pie charts are most useful.
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Chandoo,
millions of ants cannot be mistaken.....There should be a reason why everybody continues using Pie charts, despite what gurus like you or Jon and others say.
one reason could be because we are just used to, so that's what we need to change, the "comfort zone"...
i absolutely agree, since I've been "converted", I just find out that bar charts are clearer, and nicer to the view...
Regards,
Martin
[...] says we can Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability. Such a pie has too many labels to fit into a tight space, so you need ro move the labels around [...]
Chandoo -
You ask "Can I use an alternative to pie chart?"
I answer in You Say “Pie”, I Say “Bar”.
This visualization was created because it was easy to print before computers. In this day and age, it should not exist.
I think the 100% Bar Chart is just as useless/unreadable as Pies - we should rename them something like Mama's Strudel Charts - how big a slice would you like, Dear?
My money's with Jon on this topic.
The primary function of any pie chart with more than 2 or 3 data points is to obfuscate. But maybe that is the main purpose, as @Jerome suggests...
@Jerome.. Good point. Also sometimes, there is just no relationship at all.
@Martin... Organized religion is finding it tough to get converts even after 2000+ years of struggle. Jon, Stephen, countless others (and me) are a small army, it would take atleast 5000 more years before pie charts vanish... patience and good to have you here 🙂
@Jon .. very well done sir, very well done.
good points every one...
I've got to throw my vote into Jon's camp (which is also Stephen Few's camp) -- bars just tend to work better. One observation about when we say "what people are used to." There are two distinct groups here (depending on the situation, a person can fall in either one): the person who *creates* the chart and the person who *consumes* the chart. Granted, the consumers are "used to" pie charts. But, it's not like a bar chart is something they would struggle to understand or that would require explanation (like sparklines and bullet graphs). Chart consumers are "used to" consuming whatever is put in front of them. Chart creators, on the other hand, may be "used to" creating pie charts, but that isn't an excuse for them to continue to do so -- many people are used to driving without a seatbelt, leaving lights on in their house needlessly, and forwarding not-all-that-funny anecdotes via email. That doesn't mean the practice shouldn't be discouraged!
[...] example that Chandoo used recently is counting uses of words. Clearly, there are other meanings of “bar” (take bar mitzvah or bar none, for [...]
[…] Grouping smaller slices in pie chart […]
Good article. Is it possible to do that with line charts?
Hi,
Is this available in excel 2013?