All articles in 'ideas' Category

With each passing day the amount of information contained in a single spreadsheet, slide, document is growing. Thanks to demanding bosses, clients and colleagues, we are now supposed to provide all the relevant information in as much less space as possible. This is where micro charting or light weight data exploration has become a rage. […]

Often when you are processing customer records or doing mail merge, it might be useful to get initials from a given name, like JFK for John F Kennedy. You can do this using simple text formulas (left(), mid(), find()) combined with if(). Here is how: Assuming cell B3 has the full name, then this is […]

Back when I was doing MBA, one of the first courses we took was called MOC (Managerial Oral Communication). The idea of the course is simple. Each of the 60 students in class would give a 12 minute presentation on any topic of their choice to everyone. Then everyone has 8 minutes to provide suggestions, […]

Last Saturday our internet connection at home went off. I called the road runner folks hoping to getting it back up, but no luck. We were told to wait till Monday evening before the service personnel could restore the connectivity. Thankfully, we didnt feel all that bored and could spend lot of time talking to […]

Every week Pointy Haired Dilbert celebrates the art of chart making by sharing 5 of the most beautiful, innovative and effective infographic ideas from various sites. Click here to see the visualizations featured earlier. Pop, Soda or Coke? – Countywise terms used for sweetened carbonated water The pop-vs-soda map tells how marketers have been effective […]

Look at the power of conversation. A fan posted on youtube showing an apparent glitch in Tiger Woods 08 video game that you can walk on water to hit a golf ball. What did Electronic Arts and Tiger Woods do? They post a response to that video advertising Tiger Woods 09 saying that “its not […]

Here is a quick excel tip to make your charts look professional by showing symbols in the axis labels instead of text. Just follow these 4 simple steps: First identify the symbols you want to show on the axis or as data label from symbol fonts like webdings, wingdings or a custom dingbat font like […]

My polar clock using donut charts in excel started a conversation and readers have been awesome enough to download the excel and create their own clocks to show time. Even though the idea of this blog is share the little that I know with you, it is amazing how much I have learned from you […]

The other day my wife told me that we dream about a total of 6 years in our life, an average of 2 hours for everyday you sleep. [Source: wikipedia on dreams]. That is almost as much time as you would work in 30 years (30*50*40/24/365, assuming you work 40 hours a week for 50 […]

Smashing Magazine is one of daily hangouts for new design ideas, inspiration and ogle fun. When they featured Pixel Breaker’s Polar clock last Friday on Top 10 creative ways to display time, I knew this could be an interesting visualization to do in excel. So I have created a donut chart in excel that can […]

If your reports include hourly distribution of data like, Customer footfalls in your store Page views of your site Customer service calls to your toll free numbers here is an interesting charting idea to show the data around the clock (literally) Update: Visualization pros Jon Peltier and Jorge Camoes took a critical look at this, […]

Excel formulas can always be very handy, especially when you are stuck with data and need to get something done fast. But how well do you know the spreadsheet formulas? Discover these 15 extremely powerful excel formulas and save a ton of time next time you open that spreadsheet. 1. Change the case of cell […]

I use google suggest to get new post ideas, I start out by typing “what is”, “who is”, “how to”, “when is”, “where is”, “excel” and see all the suggestions Google comes up with. If I see something interesting I would mark the search topic and use it for posting here. And for the last […]

When I saw the Olympic medals won by each country by year infographic on nytimes my jaw almost dropped, go ahead see it and come back, I am sure you will love it too. It is one of the coolest visualizations I have seen in the recent past and I see infographics all the time, […]

On Saturday we went to Columbus zoo, apart from enjoying the lions, penguins, birds, I have also learned 5 simple yet effective lessons in visualization. 1. Design your charts for kids – assume your audience knew bare minimum and curious Above shown is a typical Zoo-mate info dashboard that you can see next to any […]