One of our readers Jennifer mailed me with this excel charting problem she is having. I thought why not ask other readers for their advice on this. So here it goes:
The Charting Challenge – Visualizing Changes in Market Share
Here is an excerpt from her email:
The gist of my problem is how to show change-in-market-share between time period 1 and time period 2 for two different products in the cleanest, easiest-to-grasp way.
One of the restrictions that I have are that I have to somehow show both the fact that the mkt shares add up to 100%, and the changes.
However, I am concerned that the main takeaways; increases in competitor 1 is being driven by decreases in competitor 2 … might get lost.
The sample data along with the initial graphs she has built are shown below:
you can access the market share data at this shared google doc.
Now, the question for you is: How would you improve this graphs to bring out the message?
Here are few ways I could think of:
- Reversing the competitor order to 1 at bottom and 5 at top so that comparison can be easy
- Changing the stack overlaps from partial to full so that the step-case look can be removed.
- Instead of stacks, using regular bar charts with 5 sets of columns, 1 each for a competitor and using colors to bring contrast between period 1 and period 2.
Your turn…
PS: you can post images in comments by uploading the images to a free site like flickr or photobucket and then copy pasting the image link in the comment box.
9 Responses to “Show forecast values in a different color with this simple trick [charting]”
While this works in a pinch, it clearly "lightens" the colors of the entire chart. Depending on where you use this, it will be blatantly obvious that you don't know what you are doing and present a poor looking graph.
Why not separate the data into different segments when charting and have as many colors as you have data points? You might have to create a new legend and/or repeat the chart in "invisible ink", but it would be cleaner and more consistent when new or updated data becomes available.
While I think I agree that doing it "properly" via a second series is preferable, I don't necessarily agree that making the entirety of the "future" (data, gridlines, and even the axis) semi-transparent is "poor looking". I think it could be seen as adding more emphasis to the "future-ness" of the forecast data.
In short, it's another tool for the toolbox, even if it's never needed.
Simply and clever 🙂
Quick & effective, cool. thanks.
I always use the dummy series.
Nice little trick, thanks very much!
Two sets of data better. Control is much better.
You can use the same chart next month to see what is actual and what is forecast.
To use this trick, I think grid lines has to be removed, that will make the graphic much more sharp.
to be honest, i dont understand why there is needed to do this way... in this case horizontal lines will be pale as well. then why a just can't change the color of the line partly???
Great tutorial. Thanks for the tutorial!