Post updated in May 2018.
Wow, Just Wow. I am thrilled and over joyed seeing the quality and quantity of responses received for our first visualization challenge. There are just too many good responses that dedicated a whole weekend afternoon compiling a post about them.
First let us take a look at the entries, in no particular order. You can click on the image to see expanded version. Also I have added one or two lines for each chart about what is good and what is not so good.
1. 3 colors and everything is clear
Submitted by: Gerald
What is WOW about it?
Very easy to understand the values
Shows the differences in % which makes more sense to business users
What is not so wow about it?
Somewhat misleading, since the budget variance is shown in a corner (thus when you have actual as zero, you will see 2 bars, one with budget, one with variance thus confusing the reader that 50% is the variance)
2. A simple budget vs. Actual chart
Submitted by: Juwin Thomas
What is WOW about it?
Looks slick
What is not so wow about it?
Provides very little information as no labels are available
Could have used one color for center instead and changed the orientation
3. Creative Options to Visualize Budget vs. Actual Data (1)
Submitted by: Lee
What is WOW about it?
Very easy to compare trends, for eg. It is easy to conclude that Center 1 is has grown in the last 5 quarters
What is not so wow about it?
Instead of displaying actual-budget, it could have been budget-actual since our data is like that. That way it would have been easy to compare the variances
4. Creative Options to Visualize Budget vs. Actual Data (2)
Submitted by: Lee
What is WOW about it?
Creative and shows lots of data in one quick snap shot
What is not so wow about it?
Kind of difficult to read and understand
5. Creative Options to Visualize Budget vs. Actual Data (3)
Submitted by: Lee
What is WOW about it?
Creative and Shows the quarter-wise trend in a different way
Provides average variance and actual/budget %s too
What is not so wow about it?
Could have been better if the both actual and budget values are show how incorporated
6. Simple and Easy to Read
Submitted by: MB
What is WOW about it?
Very simple and very easy to understand
What is not so wow about it?
Could have added labels since the gaps are too small
7. Quarter-wise Snapshot of Budget Performance
Submitted by: NamKo
What is WOW about it?
Provides all the useful information, budget, actual, budget-actual, variance %s
What is not so wow about it?
It is difficult to see how the centers have performed across centers
8. Center Level Performances Along with Cumulative Values
Submitted by:
What is WOW about it?
Provides a quick snapshot of center level values along with cumulative values
Looks slick
Has an option to add comments
9. Simple and Easy to Read (2)
Submitted by: Efrit
What is WOW about it?
Uses less color and stresses on actual values in the budget frame
Easy to compare both center-level and between centers
What is not so wow about it?
Since the variances are low, it is difficult to find the values without labels
10. A Pivot Chart show the Budget vs. Actual Performances
Submitted by: Jacob
What is WOW about it?
Uses pivot charts to show both center level and cumulative performances
Can be filtered using pivot chart features
What is not so wow about it?
The cumulative values are shown in a smoothed curve, although it is good, it kind of misleads
Labels could have been used as the values are close to each other
11. Simple and Easy to Read (3)
Submitted by: Michael Podemski
What is WOW about it?
Shows values in tables thus making it easy to read
What is not so wow about it?
The 3d feature of budget marker are kind of misleading as the gaps are very small, could have used a line instead
12. Cumulative Variances along with Budget and Actual Performances
Submitted by: TJ
What is WOW about it?
Shows cumulative variances as well
What is not so wow about it?
Could have used the lesser colors
13. Using form controls and displaying one center data at a time
Submitted by: D Murphy
What is WOW about it?
Provides all the information for a center quickly
Takes less space
What is not so wow about it?
Difficult to compare the performance of various centers in a quarter
You have to calculate the gap between budget and actual
14. Showing YTD Trends along with budget and actual trends
Submitted by: Pablo GM
What is WOW about it?
Looks slick
Provides a variety of information
What is not so wow about it?
Could have used colors instead of gradients
Doesn’t tell the difference between budget and actual in numbers
A Big thank you to all the people who have sent their entries through email and blog comments.
Thanks to readers for constantly checking out the entries and commenting on the ones that needed improvement.
Additional Material You Should Check out If you want to Make Charts Like Above:
Target vs. Actual Chart in Excel | Best charts for showing % progress
How to create interactive chart in Excel
Excel Combination Chart Basics
Our Excel Charting Page with a Ton of tutorials and DIY Training Material
8 Responses to “Pivot Tables from large data-sets – 5 examples”
Do you have links to any sites that can provide free, large, test data sets. Both large in diversity and large in total number of rows.
Good question Ron. I suggest checking out kaggle.com, data.world or create your own with randbetween(). You can also get a complex business data-set from Microsoft Power BI website. It is contoso retail data.
Hi Chandoo,
I work with large data sets all the time (80-200MB files with 100Ks of rows and 20-40 columns) and I've taken a few steps to reduce the size (20-60MB) so they can better shared and work more quickly. These steps include: creating custom calculations in the pivot instead of having additional data columns, deleting the data tab and saving as an xlsb. I've even tried indexmatch instead of vlookup--although I'm not sure that saved much. Are there any other tricks to further reduce the file size? thanks, Steve
Hi Steve,
Good tips on how to reduce the file size and / or process time. Another thing I would definitely try is to use Data Model to load the data rather than keep it in the file. You would be,
1. connect to source data file thru Power Query
2. filter away any columns / rows that are not needed
3. load the data to model
4. make pivots from it
This would reduce the file size while providing all the answers you need.
Give it a try. See this video for some help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7bpysO3FQ
Normally when Excel processes data it utilizes all four cores on a processor. Is it true that Excel reduces to only using two cores When calculating tables? Same issue if there were two cores present, it would reduce to one in a table?
I ask because, I have personally noticed when i use tables the data is much slower than if I would have filtered it. I like tables for obvious reasons when working with datasets. Is this true.
John:
I don't know if it is true that Excel Table processing only uses 2 threads/cores, but it is entirely possible. The program has to be enabled to handle multiple parallel threads. Excel Lists/Tables were added long ago, at a time when 2 processes was a reasonable upper limit. And, it could be that there simply is no way to program table processing to use more than 2 threads at a time...
When I've got a large data set, I will set my Excel priority to High thru Task Manager to allow it to use more available processing. Never use RealTime priority or you're completely locked up until Excel finishes.
That is a good tip Jen...