One of my favorite cricket player, the GOD – Sachin Tendulkar has become highest test run scorer.
What do I get if Sachin becomes highest scorer, you may ask.
In order to celebrate this occasion I have created a cool sports dashboard in excel with some of the top test cricket players’ statistics. And, you get to learn how to make one. So read on and wish the little master many more successes.
Download the sports dashboards in excel and continue reading.
1. Find out which data you want to show in the dashboard
Not all data is important. Especially when you are creating a dashboard, it is vital to provide only data and insights that are necessary to draw conclusions. A simple rule of thumb is:
Your car is complex machine with thousands of parts, few micro-processors and tons of other stuff. But the driver dashboard shows only three (at most 4) data points at any time – speed of car, engine heat, tachometer showing how fast your engine is rotating. Few on/off indicators that wont bother you unless you need to notice: “seat belt sign, gear indicators, airbag status, batter status etc.”
So next time you have hundreds of data elements just use this analogy to cut down to the bare minimum and show only those.
For our tutorial, the data comes from this rediff article with statistics for various test cricket players:
From the looks of it, there are just 4 things that are vital: total runs ever scored, highest score, average score per innings, Total number of centuries(and half-centuries).
2. Create one chart
First let us create a simple bar chart for the total score data. Just select the cells with total scores and click on insert chart icon and select “bar chart” as chart type.
Now we get a default excel chart. I have used the following steps to adjust the formatting:
- Remove background
- Remove grid lines
Adjust axis scaling:
You may not want to adjust the axis scaling minimums. Read the follow up discussion here: Should bar charts always start at zero? Reader PollSince the score are from 8001 (minimum) to 12027 (max) I have adjusted the axis scaling options set minimum value as 7500 and max. as 12500.- Remove axis
- Add data labels and adjust their alignment, adjust font-scaling as well.
- Adjust colors and change the bar color for maximum value
- Adjust gap width (from 150 to 10 or something)
See this image with how the charts looked after each step:
[larger version]
3. Adjust the chart size / location so that it fits snugly inside the table with data
Just select the chart and adjust its size and location until it fits inside the table. You may want to use aligning chart objects on spreadsheet trick.
4. Repeat the steps 2 & 3 for remaining charts
Just copy paste the first chart you have created and change data source and scaling options. Adjust formatting if needed. Once they are all ready the dashboard should look like what you see below.
Download and play with sports dashboards in excel
Have fun 🙂
More excel dashboard tutorials:
Creating KPI (Key Performance Indicator) Dashboards in Excel – 4 part tutorial
Making Visualizations for Dashboards
Too much data? Use tables instead
14 Responses to “Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability”
I think the virtue of pie charts is precisely that they are difficult to decode. In many contexts, you have to release information but you don't want the relationship between values to jump at your reader. That's when pie charts are most useful.
[...] link Leave a Reply [...]
Chandoo,
millions of ants cannot be mistaken.....There should be a reason why everybody continues using Pie charts, despite what gurus like you or Jon and others say.
one reason could be because we are just used to, so that's what we need to change, the "comfort zone"...
i absolutely agree, since I've been "converted", I just find out that bar charts are clearer, and nicer to the view...
Regards,
Martin
[...] says we can Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability. Such a pie has too many labels to fit into a tight space, so you need ro move the labels around [...]
Chandoo -
You ask "Can I use an alternative to pie chart?"
I answer in You Say “Pie”, I Say “Bar”.
This visualization was created because it was easy to print before computers. In this day and age, it should not exist.
I think the 100% Bar Chart is just as useless/unreadable as Pies - we should rename them something like Mama's Strudel Charts - how big a slice would you like, Dear?
My money's with Jon on this topic.
The primary function of any pie chart with more than 2 or 3 data points is to obfuscate. But maybe that is the main purpose, as @Jerome suggests...
@Jerome.. Good point. Also sometimes, there is just no relationship at all.
@Martin... Organized religion is finding it tough to get converts even after 2000+ years of struggle. Jon, Stephen, countless others (and me) are a small army, it would take atleast 5000 more years before pie charts vanish... patience and good to have you here 🙂
@Jon .. very well done sir, very well done.
good points every one...
I've got to throw my vote into Jon's camp (which is also Stephen Few's camp) -- bars just tend to work better. One observation about when we say "what people are used to." There are two distinct groups here (depending on the situation, a person can fall in either one): the person who *creates* the chart and the person who *consumes* the chart. Granted, the consumers are "used to" pie charts. But, it's not like a bar chart is something they would struggle to understand or that would require explanation (like sparklines and bullet graphs). Chart consumers are "used to" consuming whatever is put in front of them. Chart creators, on the other hand, may be "used to" creating pie charts, but that isn't an excuse for them to continue to do so -- many people are used to driving without a seatbelt, leaving lights on in their house needlessly, and forwarding not-all-that-funny anecdotes via email. That doesn't mean the practice shouldn't be discouraged!
[...] example that Chandoo used recently is counting uses of words. Clearly, there are other meanings of “bar” (take bar mitzvah or bar none, for [...]
[…] Grouping smaller slices in pie chart […]
Good article. Is it possible to do that with line charts?
Hi,
Is this available in excel 2013?