To all our readers & friends from USA,
I wish you a happy, fun & safe 4th of July.
For the last 4th of July (2013), we (Jo, kids & I) were in USA. We went to Washington DC to meet up a few friends for that weekend. And we had one of the most memorable evenings of our lives when we went to national mall area in the evening to watch beautifully choreographed fireworks. Kids really loved the amazing display of fire-crackers and enthusiasm. (here is a pic, taken by Nakshu, our daughter)
While we all are back in India this time, it doesn’t mean we cant celebrate 4th of July. So I made some fireworks. In Excel of course.
Here is a little Excel animation I made for all of us.
4th of July Fireworks – Excel animation
First watch this quick demo (<15 secs)
Download the 4th of July fireworks workbook
I got the Excel fireworks idea very late in the evening. So the file is not very clean. But easy to understand and play with. Download it here.
How is this made?
Lets spare the detailed tutorial for another day. Here is a quick summary.
- Lets assume a fire work goes in a straight line at an arbitrary angle between 75 to 105 degrees (90 being vertical) to a random height.
- Lets assume the firework effect creates 40 spokes of a perfect circle whose radius grows as the firework explodes.
- So we create a scatter plot with lines & spokes.
- Thru VBA, we increase the length of line from 0% to 100%, thus creating firework shooting to sky effect.
- Then, we increase the radius of circle from 0% to 100% to create firework explosion effect.
- Finally we change the previous line height & circle radius back to 0% before showing next firework.
- At last, we toggle the display visibility of message (“Have a fun 4th of July”)
That is all. Here are a few previous examples that detail some of these techniques.
- Creating a spoke chart in Excel
- Happy Diwali, animated chart in Excel
- Hurricane Sandy explained in Excel with animated chart
- Showing & hiding a message – Customer service dashboard
So thats all for now. Enjoy your 4th of July weekend and lets meet Monday with something awesome.
18 Responses to “Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take?”
Great post. I can't vote, though, because the answer I want to put down is "it depends". As with all visualisations, you've got to take into account your audience, your purpose, technical skills, where it will be viewed, etc.
I'm with Andy: It depends. Some I would use, some I might use, some I won't touch with a barge pole.
Naturally I have comments 🙂
The dial gauge, though familiar, is less easy to read than a linear type of chart (thermometer or bullet). It's really no better than the traffic lights, because all it can really tell you is which category the point falls in: red, yellow, or green.
By the same token, pie charts are so familiar, people don't know they can't read them. Remember how long it takes kids to learn to read an analog clock?
Bullet charts don't show trends.
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or ine component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual values with Targets (or Budgets … [...]
I voted for #6 even though I agree with the other comments that it depends.
The majority of the votes are for the #2, thermometer chart. I still have yet to understand what happens when you are above plan/goal, which was brought up in yesterday's post.
Also, I agree with Jon in that it would be better to flip the series and make the filled part the target or goal and the line or marker the actual.
I am also a fan of using text when appropriate if the data is among other metrics in a type of dashboard. Calling it out by saying actual and % achievement is a good option.
Another "it depends" vote. Are you just looking at one or are you comparing a number of targets with actuals? You didn't include a text box. The problem with sentences is that they can get lost in a page of gray text. A text box can call attention to the numbers and line them up effectively.
I'm with Jon: "Some I would use, some I might use, some I won’t touch with a barge pole" and I'm surprised that some of your readers voted for the last group.
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
"It depends" is also my take. What I usually try to drill into my clients dashboard design is the fu ndamental difference between spot results (am I on target for this month) and long term trends.. I always try to create 3 different set of graphs to represent real perormance:
- spot results vs objectives
- cumulative results vs objectives
- long-term trend (moving average) mostly) to see where we're going
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take? (tags: excel charts) [...]
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Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
I totally agree, Bob. I would normally favour a line for the target and a column for the actual, you can see quite easily then which columns break through the line, then.
[...] best charts to compare actual values with targets — den Status mal anders zeigen, z. B. als Tacho [...]
Thermometer charts: "Not appropriate when actual values exceed targets" - this is easily solved by making the "mercury" portion a different color from the border, then you can clearly see where the expected range ends and the actual values keep going.
People seem to knock gauges quite a bit in dashboarding, but trying to show comparison of realtime data between operating sites and targets for each site can easily be done with a bank of gauges that have the optimal operating points at 12 o'clock.
The human eye is great at pattern stripping, and any deviation of a gauge from the expected 12 position will quickly register with an operator and attract his attention. Using a colour background, or meter edge, will also indicate the sensitivity of a particular site.
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I am wondering how will the plotting work, for some of the targets which may have been achieved before time. E.g. for the month of Jul the target was 226 and the actual was 219. So the chart will show a deficit in meeting the target by 7 points but what if this 7 may have been completed earlier in month of June. So ideally it not a deficit.