One race, Every medalist ever – Interactive Excel Visualization

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During London 2012 Olympics, Usain Bolt reached the 100mts finish line faster than anyone in just 9.63 seconds. Most of us would be still reading this paragraph before Mr. Bolt finished the race.

To put this in perspective, NY Times created a highly entertaining interactive visualization. Go ahead and check it out. I am sure you will love it.

So I wanted to create something similar in Excel. And here is what I came up with.

Demo of Usain Bolt vs. Rest Visualization

Here is a quick demo of this interactive chart. Click on it to enlarge.

Usain Bolt vs. Rest of Olympic Sprinters - Interactive Excel Chart - Demo

How is this made?

One thing is sure, It took me more than 9.63 seconds to create this 😉

The basic ingredients of this chart are Interactive Hyperlinks, Conditional formatting, Form Controls, INDEX + MATCH formulas, Picture links and Tables.

Since explaining all this is going to take forever, I made a short video showing you behind curtains of this. Watch it below [or click here to watch it on YouTube]

Download this Interactive Excel Workbook

Click here to download the workbook and play with it.
Note: This works in Excel 2010 or above only.

Do you like this visualization

I loved re-constructing this NY Times chart. It was a nice challenge. Although so many hyperlinks made Excel a bit sluggish, it was worth it.
What about you? Do you like this? Go ahead and break apart the download file and see what more you can do.

Special thanks to NYTimes for the inspiration.

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9 Responses to “CP044: My first dashboard was a failure!!!”

  1. Oz says:

    CONGRATS on the book!

    Thanks for this podcast. It's great to hear about your disaster and recovery. It's a reminder that we're all human. None of this skill came easily.

  2. Din Muhammad Samimi says:

    Hey chandoo
    this really a good lesson learned
    but as I have already stated in one of my previous email that it would be more helpful for us if you could release videos of your classes for us
    thanks

  3. Nafi says:

    The article gave me motivation, especially you describing the terrible disaster that you faced but how to get back from the setbacks. Thanks for that, but with video this will be more fun.

  4. Amankwah says:

    You always motivate me with respect of the tools in excel. How we can really exploit it to the fullest. Thanks very much

  5. Juan says:

    Thank you very much, Chandoo, for your excellent lessons, I am anxious to learn so valuable tips and tricks from you, keep up the great job!
    I truly appreciate the transcripts of the podcasts, because as a speaker of English as a second language, it allows me to fully understand the material. It'd be great if you can add transcripts to your online courses too, I am sure people will welcome this feature.

  6. David Evans says:

    Dashboards for Excel has arrived in Laguna Beach, CA! Thanks!

    Now I need to make time to "learn and inwardly digest" its contents as one of my high school teachers would admonish us!

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