This is the first installment of Chart Busters.
Chart busters is a new series of posts on PHD and Jon Peltier’s blog. We take turns to exterminate bad charts and associated evils. Although our proton packs are still not perfect, together we are confident of tackling most ghosts trapped in bad charts.
In this installment we take a look at Asset Allocation Chart that looks like it is hexed.
The bad chart
Our reader DMurphy submitted a poorly made asset allocation chart,
If you are looking for an early contender, here’s one which came in to my wife from her Pension company this week showing (or at least attempting to show) the make-up of her investments.
The above image is an excel reconstruction of even sadder looking chart.
What is wrong with it?
- Poor chart selection: Pie charts are good for 3-4 data elements. When we need to present 10 or so items, it is better to use a bar chart or a line chart.
- Not grouping and sorting the information: In the first chart which is displaying Asset Allocation is made from data that has 3 different series – Bonds, Equities and Other. But the chart shows everything in the same way, thus making it difficult to understand how assets are allocated to various classes of investment. Also, the data is not sorted in any meaningful order.
- Poor use of labels: The labels A,B,C … are non descriptive. They are also repeated on the other chart although they mean different things.
The Chart Busters’ Fix
Thanks to guest parachartanalyst Joe Mako, who contributed this fix:
I have taken Joe’s ideas and slightly modified them to create the below chart
Click here to download the above fix in excel and see it yourself.
Added Later: Readers Submitted Fixes
Submitted by Paulo Cesar Semblano da Costa:
- I think Paulo’s version manages to reduce chart clutter a bit more. Very good effort.
- You can download this version from here.
Submitted by Jeff Wier
- Jeff’s version is very good. Again, like Paulo, he managed to reduce the chart clutter bit more and made it look very slick.
- You can download this version from here.
What we have learned?
- Zombies are scary, even when they are looking like donuts.
- Always try to sort the data in some meaningful order before pushing it to charts
- Use a variation of panel chart or color the series sensibly to bring out key differences
- Try to avoid generic labels like 1,2,3 or A,B,C and instead use the actual values and category names
How would you have tackled this?
We dont know how open source the ghost busters were. But Chart Busters are 100% open source. Share your ideas and suggestions for improving this scary little chart to something that makes sense.
When ya gonna call…?
Consult chartbusters today. Send us your bad charts. All you have to do is fill out this google form.
Arent ya gonna read these… ?
What to do no when no one likes your pie | Non sucky excel chart templates
23 Responses to “Shift Calendar Template – FREE Download”
Hi Chandoo,
your recent postings include only Excel 2007 templates. Unfortunately the company I work at still runs Excel 2003. Is it possible to get your awesome files in other excel version as well?
Thanks so much for your great excel stuff!
Is it possible to do this for shifts with hours instead of days? To organise a three shift day?
Thanks in advance,
Stelios
In my organization there are 45 employees i need split then into three shifts ex:A shift:14,B shift:14,C shift:14 and week off:3 kindly help me on this.
@Masthan
You need to understand what rules your company has for the various shifts / roster combinations
Chandoo, I once did a shift control spreadsheet for my team. I put one person in each line, the columns were the days. I put a shift code in each cell indicating in which shift that person should work, or if the person were out that day. I have two codes for being out. One is for vacations and one is to compensate days worked in weekends. This way I was able to count how many persons I have in each shift, how many were on vacations and how many were out compensating (that's the term we use here) weekend worked hours.
Later I included the possibility of a person be in two lines one for normal hours other for overtime. This is mainly used for planning purposes. If you would like I can send you an example. The only problem of this spreadsheet is that we don't have a person view, only this consolidated view.
Hi George, I would like to have a copy of your spreadsheet if you can share it.
Thanks in advance, Chuck
Hi Chandoo,
Where is the code located ? is it VBA ? If so , how do you hide it ? Or it is .NET ?
Thx
@Idan
.
No VBA or code, it is all done with Mirrors.
Only Joking,
.
But there is no VBA or code,
It is all done with Named Formulas and Lookups.
Have alook at the cells in the calander area and Named Formulas in the Formulas, Name Manager Tab.
How can i calculate between two or more different workbooks? Please, reply me as early as possible.
@Anand
Open the workbooks you want to link to
Start a formula = and click and change between workbooks as required.
You can use the View, Switch window menu to change workbooks mid formula
The format for using workbooks is
=[Workbook.xlsm]Sheet1!$A$1
or
=SUM('[Book2.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1:$D$10)
etc
Hi Chandoo,
I am working with a call centre wherein i ned to update at the month end 20 to 30 employees login hours which are defict to track it at the month end is very difficult is there any template which can be made to track that why on a particular day a guy who needs to be on calls was why not on calls.
Thank you so much Chandoo. This is really helping me. As usual, you rock.
What's FortyTwoDays and Calendar in Name manager?
Both are unused and FortyTwoDays doesn't make any sense.
I have a SQL db that contains records of events scheduled/completed on a particular date. Can this method ous building a calendar be used to display those events on the respective day?
Positively awesome!
I'm attempting to help a friend create a schedule for adult classes - and of course its not"paid help". Here is the scenario:
20 classes, instructor, room#, student class size, start date, number of class days (need to subtract weekends)
class
instructor
room
students
start
#days
PATH
karen
201
21
01/01/13
11
BILLING
jane
401
15
01/12/13
13
MEDISOFT
mike
301
11
01/25/13
9
he'd like to see these classes show up in different colors within the same month's calendar chart. He can draw it, but I'd like to see it done automatically through data, and I just can't visualize it, but I KNOW this will work - can you help?
Jan 🙂
Dear chandoo,
Try many way to download still can't access. Any way we want to try out 3 shifts with 3 guys in a group .eg Group A Morn, Group B Night and Group C Rest. And every each group must work on sunday to take turns. In fact we are security teams so that's why sunday is required to work. Pls guide and show how to put in the working calendar. Thank you in advance.
I've been trying to copy and/or recreate this to use in a workbook I'm doing for the transportation department I'm working for. I need to have the calendar on the first sheet in my document (it has graph's from data on another sheet). I'm trying to use it to track (with the conditional formatting) accidents and injuries. I've redone the conditional formatting to do 4 different accident types (no injury, near miss, OSHA recordable injury and work loss injury), but when I enter the formula's you have in the calendar portion where it says "DateOfFirst-FirstWeekDay" I can't figure out how you did that. Are you able to help?
I would like to use Excel to solve the following problem for a community work. I want to create a Driver schedule for a given month from a pool of volunteers for a community service. Each of these volunteers can drive only on specific days in a week. I would like to populate the driving schedule for each weekday with primary, secondary and tertiary drivers in a random fashion so that I do not overburden one person. I would greatly any help you can provide.
Hi chandoo,
Thanks for your valuable effort for create this template and let me know how to add multiple employees in the the Roaster.
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful. Could you please let me know how i can use the same for n number of resources who work 24/7, considering their leaves and holidays?
Thanks,
Savitha
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful to all. Could you please let me know how i can use the same if I want to add for some more shifts, since the color is not getting change if I add more shifts like 4,5 etc.,
Thanks,
Murali
nice post
How can I change the date to 2017 under Shift Data worksheet.