Ever wanted to make a cool, snazzy interactive chart in Excel? Something like this:
In this tutorial, learn all about making your very first interactive chart.
Click here to download the workbook with chart template and all the formulas. Refer to it while reading the article.
Interactive chart in Excel – Tutorial
There are several ways to make an interactive chart in Excel. You can use data validation, form controls, slicers, timelines, VBA or hyperlinks. In this tutorial, learn how to make an interactive chart with data validation and slicers. For other techniques, refer to resources section of this post.
Interactive chart with Data Validation
Let’s say you are the product manager at Billette consumer care. You are looking at historical order quantity data for various products. Your data looks like below:
Making one chart with all of this is going to be very busy and hard to read. You want to make a dynamic or interactive chart so your boss can choose which product she wants to analyze and understand the order trend.
Step 1: Make a list of all choices
Select all the product names and go to Namebox (top left corner) and type a name like products.- Alternatively, you can also list the product names in a separate range and give that a name.
Let’s say we have the products in the products name.
Step 2: Set up selection mechanism
- Decide which cell will have the user selection. Let’s say this is Q5. Select the cell and go to Data > Data Validation.
- Change validation criteria to Allow > List.
- Type products in the Source. Click ok.
Now, we have way to select product in the cell Q5.
Related: Excel basics – How to setup in-cell drop downs in Excel.
Step 3: Find out which product is selected
If we want the name of the product selected, we can simply use =Q5. For the rest of calculations, we need the number of the product (ie what is the position of the selected product in products). For this, we can use MATCH formula, like below.
Type this MATCH formula in an empty cell like I3.
=MATCH(Q5, products, 0)
This will return a number, matching the product user has picked.
Step 4: Calculating order quantity to show in the chart
Now, assume we have the number of product selected in cell I3. Given this, we can calculate picked product’s quantity using a simple INDEX formula:
=INDEX(data1[@[Soap]:[Deodorant]],$I$3)
If your data is in a normal range, rather than a table, use a formula like this:
=INDEX(C6:H6,$I$3)
Fill down the formula.
Now that we have calculated product quantity values for selected product, if you change I3, you will see values for the relevant product.
Step 5: Create the chart
Now that all the background work is done, let’s insert a chart.
Simply select picked product column and insert a column or line chart. We get this:
First, let’s add axis labels. Right click on the chart and go to select data. Edit horizontal / category labels and select the month column.
Now, remove chart title and chart border (set it to no line). We end up with something like this:
Step 6: Bring everything together
Are you ready for the chart? We are almost done. We just need to bring everything together and our first interactive chart will be kicking and beating.
- Position the chart under cell Q5 (the data validation selection cell)
- Go to Insert > Shapes > Rounded Rectangle and draw a nice big rectangle around the chart and Q5.
- Remove fill color from the shape and adjust the line.
- Now, when you pick a new product from Q5, your chart will update.
Interactive chart with Pivot Table and Slicer
If you are too shy to INDEX + MATCH on weekdays, you can try the Pivot Table approach. This works very well and let’s you make equally amazing interactive charts. See below quick demo.
Keep in mind that your data needs to get fit. Rearrange so it looks like this. If you need help, read: Unpivot data quickly with Power Query.
Step 1: Insert a pivot from your data
Select your data (month, product and quantity columns) and insert a pivot table.
- Add Month to row labels area. In newer versions of Excel, this will create date hierarchy – Year, Quarter and Month. If so, drop Quarter.
- Add Quantity to values area.
- Right click on Product and add it as a slicer.
Related: Introduction to Excel Pivot Tables
Step 2: Insert a pivot chart
Select any cell inside the pivot and go to Analyze ribbon > Pivot chart. Select either a line or column chart.
We get this:
In newer versions of Excel, you can insert a pivot chart directly from data. But I find the pivot table first approach better as you can adjust items you want before charting.
Step 3: Format the pivot chart
- Select the pivot chart and go to Analyze ribbon and turn off Field Buttons.
- Replace chart title with “Total Order Quantity in last 13 months” or something like that.
- Set chart border to No line.
- Position the slicer adjacent to the chart.
- Draw a rounded rectangle around the thing
- Our interactive chart is ready for play.
Optional makeup hints:
If you want more bang for your chart,
- Add a sub-title describing the trend. Refer to download example file for inspiration. Read: Give descriptive titles to your charts
- Set limits on the vertical axis. By default Excel will change Y axis limits whenever your pick a product. This can create some distortion of the numbers and confuse your users if they want to compare products. You can format the axis and set limits. Select the axis, press CTRL+1 and set minimum to 0 and maximum to highest possible value (rounded of course). For our example, this could be 2000. This way, only bar heights change, not the axis.
- Adjust gap width. Excel would pick some ridiculous value like 219%. Adjust this to 100% or something like that for less white space on the chart. To do this, click on the columns, press CTRL+1 and from Series options adjust the gap width.
Create your first interactive chart in Excel – Video tutorial
Check out below video tutorial to understand all these steps in detail. Make sure you practice by downloading the example workbook. Watch it below or on our YouTube channel.
Download Excel Interactive Chart workbook
Please click here to download interactive chart workbook. Play with charts and examine formulas to learn more.
Want more interactive charts?
Check out below examples to see what else is possible.
- Target vs. Actual – Biker on a hill chart
- Then vs. Now chart in Excel
- How tax burden has changed over time – Interactive chart in Excel
What is your favorite way to make interactive / dynamic charts in Excel?
I used to make charts with formulas all the time. But now a days, I prefer making them with pivot table + slicer route if possible. This reduces the amount of formula work needed and still gives awesome results.
What about you? What is your favorite technique for creating interactive charts? Please share in the comments section.
20 Responses to “Simulating Dice throws – the correct way to do it in excel”
You have an interesting point, but the bell curve theory is nonsense. Certainly it is not what you would want, even if it were true.
Alpha Bravo - Although not a distribution curve in the strict sense, is does reflect the actual results of throwing two physical dice.
And reflects the following . .
There is 1 way of throwing a total of 2
There are 2 ways of throwing a total of 3
There are 3 ways of throwing a total of 4
There are 4 ways of throwing a total of 5
There are 5 ways of throwing a total of 6
There are 6 ways of throwing a total of 7
There are 5 ways of throwing a total of 8
There are 4 ways of throwing a total of 9
There are 3 ways of throwing a total of 10
There are 2 ways of throwing a total of 11
There is 1 way of throwing a total of 12
@alpha bravo ... welcome... 🙂
either your comment or your dice is loaded 😉
I am afraid the distribution shown in the right graph is what you get when you throw a pair of dice in real world. As Karl already explained, it is not random behavior you see when you try to combine 2 random events (individual dice throws), but more of order due to how things work.
@Karl, thanks 🙂
When simulating a coin toss, the ROUND function you used is appropriate. However, your die simulation formula should use INT instead of ROUND:
=INT(RAND()*6)+1
Otherwise, the rounding causes half of each number's predictions to be applied to the next higher number. Also, you'd get a count for 7, which isn't possible in a die.
To illustrate, I set up 1200 trials of each formula in a worksheet and counted the results. The image here shows the table and a histogram of results:
http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/wp-content/img200808/RandonDieTrials.png
@Jon: thanks for pointing this out. You are absolutely right. INT() is what I should I have used instead of ROUND() as it reduces the possibility of having either 1 or 6 by almost half that of having other numbers.
this is such a good thing to learn, helps me a lot in my future simulations.
Btw, the actual graphs I have shown were plotted based on randbetween() and not from rand()*6, so they still hold good.
Updating the post to include your comments as it helps everyone to know this.
By the way, the distribution is not a Gaussian distribution, as Karl points out. However, when you add the simulations of many dice together (i.e., ten throws), the overall results will approximate a Gaussian distribution. If my feeble memory serves me, this is the Central Limit Theorem.
@Jon, that is right, you have to nearly throw infinite number of dice and add their face counts to get a perfect bell curve or Gaussian distribution, but as the central limit theorem suggests, our curve should roughly look like a bell curve... 🙂
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I'm afraid to say that this is a badly stated and ambiguous post, which is likely to cause errors and misunderstanding.
Aside from the initial use of round() instead of int(),.. (you've since corrected), you made several crucial mistakes by not accurately and unambiguously stating the details.
Firstly, you said:
"this little function generates a random fraction between 0 and 1"
Correctly stated this should be:
"this little function generates a random fraction F where 0 <= F < 1".
Secondly, I guess because you were a little fuzzy about the exact range of values returned by rand(), you have then been just as ambiguous in stating:
"I usually write int(rand()*12)+1 if I need a random number between 0 to 12".
(that implies 13 integers, not 12)
Your formula, does not return 13 integers between 0 to 12.
It returns 12 integers between 1 and 12 (inclusive).
-- As rand() returns a random fraction F where 0 <= F < 1, you can obviously can only get integers between 1 and 12 (inclusive) from your formula as stated above, but clearly not zero.
If you had said either:
"I usually write int(rand()*12) if I need a random number between 0 to 11 (inclusive)",
or:
"I usually write int(rand()*12)+1 if I need a random number between 1 to 12 (inclusive)"
then you would have been correct.
Unfortunately, you FAIL! -- repeat 5th grade please!
Your Fifth Grade Maths Teacher
Idk if I'm on the right forum for this or how soon one can reply, but I'm working on a test using Excel and I have a table set up to get all my answers from BUT I need to generate 10,000 answers from this one table. Every time, I try to do this I get 10,000 duplicate answers. I know there has to be some simple command I have left out or not used at all, any help would be extremely helpful! (And I already have the dice figured out lol)
Roll 4Dice with 20Sides (4D20) if the total < 20 add the sum of a rerolled 2D20. What is the average total over 10,000 turns? (Short and sweet)
Like I said when I try to simulate 10,000turns I just get "67" 10,000times -_- help please! 😀
@Justin
This is a good example to use for basic simulation
have a look at the file I have posted at:
https://rapidshare.com/files/1257689536/4_Dice.xlsx
It uses a variable size dice which you set
Has 4 Dice
Throws them 10,000 times
If Total per roll < 20 uses the sum of 2 extra dice Adds up the scores Averages the results You can read more about how it was constructed by reading this post: http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/05/06/data-tables-monte-carlo-simulations-in-excel-a-comprehensive-guide/
Oh derp, i fell for this trap too, thinking i was makeing a good dice roll simulation.. instead of just got an average of everything 😛
Noteably This dice trow simulate page is kinda important, as most roleplay dice games were hard.. i mean, a crit failure or crit hit (rolling double 1's or double 6's) in a a game for example dungeons and dragons, if you dont do the roll each induvidual dice, then theres a higher chance of scoreing a crit hit or a crit failure on attacking..
I've been working on this for awhile. So here's a few issues I've come across and solved.
#1. round() does work, but you add 0.5 as the constant, not 1.
trunc() and int() give you the same distributions as round() when you use the constant 1, so among the three functions they are all equally fair as long as you remember what you're doing when you use one rather than the other. I've proven it with a rough mathematical proof -- I say rough only because I'm not a proper mathematician.
In short, depending on the function (s is the number of sides, and R stands in for RAND() ):
round(f), where f = sR + 0.5
trunc(f), where f = sR + 1
int(f), where f = sR + 1
will all give you the same distribution, meaning that between the three functions they are fair and none favors something more than the others. However...
#2. None of the above gets you around the uneven distribution of possible outcomes of primes not found in the factorization of the base being used (base-10, since we're using decimal; and the prime factorization of 10 is 2 and 5).
With a 10-sided die, where your equation would be
=ROUND(6*RAND()+0.5)
Your distribution of possible values is even across all ten possibilities.
However, if you use the most basic die, a 6-sided die, the distributions favor some rolls over others. Let's assume your random number can only generate down to the thousandths (0.000 ? R ? 0.999). The distribution of possible outcomes of your function are:
1: 167
2: 167
3: 166
4: 167
5: 167
6: 166
So 4 and 6 are always under-represented in the distribution by 1 less than their compatriots. This is true no matter how many decimals you allow, though the distribution gets closer and closer to equal the further towards infinite decimal places you go.
This carries over to all die whose numbers of sides do not factor down to a prime factorization of some exponential values of 2 and 5.
So, then, how can we fix this one, tiny issue in a practical manner that doesn't make our heads hurt or put unnecessary strain on the computer?
Real quick addendum to the above:
Obviously when I put the equation after the example of the 10-sided die, I meant to put a 10*RAND() instead of a 6*RAND(). Oops!
Also, where I have 0.000 ? R ? 0.999, the ?'s are supposed to be less-than-or-equal-to signs but the comments didn't like that. Oh well.
How do you keep adding up the total? I would like to have a cell which keeps adding up the total sum of the two dices, even after a new number is generated in the cells when you refresh or generate new numbers.
So, how do you simulate rolling 12 dice? Do you write int(rand()*6) 12 times?
Is there a simpler way of simulating n dice in Excel?
I've run this code in VBA
Sub generate()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.Calculation = False
Dim app, i As Long
Set app = Application.WorksheetFunction
For i = 3 To 10002
Cells(i, 3).Value = i - 2
Cells(i, 4).Value = app.RandBetween(2, 12)
Cells(i, 5).Value = app.RandBetween(1, 6) + app.RandBetween(1, 6)
Next
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Application.Calculation = True
End Sub
But I get the same distribution for both columns 4 and 5
Why ?
@Mohammed
I would expect to get the same distribution as you have effectively used the same function