Watching the Olympic athletes run & jump all I could think of is,
- What should I eat to jump & sprint like that?
- How come I never heard about steeple chase?
- Should we really have 3 bullet points in all lists?
But I digress. Coming back, when watching one of those hurdles events, I got an idea as sharp as Chinese table tennis team.
Why not create a hurdles game in Excel to measure how good you are with keyboard?
So ladies & gentleman, let me present you our very own Olympics hurdle run.
Excel Hurdles Challenge
What is it?
This is a simple spreadsheet based game. Your objective is to reach from Start cell to End cell in shortest possible time, ONLY USING KEYBOARD.
Hurdles challenge eh?!? What rules I must obey?
- The first rule of hurdles challenge is you use ONLY KEYBOARD.
- You must touch cells on the red trail only.
- You are not allowed to land on blank cells unless.
- For each violation of above 3 rules, you get 1 second penalty.
- That is all. Happy jumping & sprinting.
Download Excel Hurdles Challenge
Click here to download the challenge workbook.
Just enable macros and get jumping.
Note: this workbook is tested in Excel 2007, 2010 and 2013 and works ok.
How fast did you go?
When I tried it first time, I got 23 seconds. But after a bit of practice, I got to 17 seconds and no penalties. While I am no Usain Bolt, I feel pretty happy with result.
What about you? How fast can you go? Go ahead and take the hurdles challenge and post your time in comments.
Once you reach your personal best, go enjoy the weekend. When we meet next week, I will have something awesome, something new and something smart waiting for you.
Struggling with the hurdles? You should learn a few keyboard shortcuts.
Check out below pages to pick up some keyboard shortcuts. Once done, go back and take the challenge.
- Comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts
- 10 Keyboard shortcuts I can’t live without
- 100 Excel tips, tricks & shortcuts
PS: If you have more time to kill, check out these Excel games.
15 Responses to “Make a Bubble Chart in Excel [15 second tutorial]”
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!
Whyyyyyyyy?
The idea is to tell how to make a bubble chart. I got an e-mail from a reader recently asking how the scatter bubble is made. So I thought a 15 second tutorial would be a good idea to show this.
Did that email go "Dear Chandoo, I know that you scorn bubble charts, but if I don't do one in Excel for my boss then he'll fire my sorry ass, and my children will have to be sold for medical experiments in order for me to be able to afford the upgrade path to Excel 2010"?
If so, fair enough...it's all in the greater good 😉
Chandoo,
I am using excel 2003 and it is not working. The x axis is not the one that I enter in x axis column. Please help! Thanks.
Sorry, after few attempts, I managed to get the right result. I shouldn't select the title (header) of the table and select only the data to produce the right bubble chart.
What's wrong with bubble charts? Is there a better method for displaying scatter plots with lots of overlapping data points? Don't tell me you'd rather jitter!
@Sanwijay: Cool.
@Precious Roy: There is nothing wrong with bubble charts. Infact, it is the only way to show 3 dimensional data (x,y and sizes) without confusing your audience. Jeff is worried that people might misuse the chart. As with any chart, bubbles also have a place and time for using them.
I recommend using bubble charts to show relative performance various products in several regions and similar situations.
Also, human eye is notorious in wrongly estimating the bubble sizes (as we have to measure areas). See http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/07/28/charting-lessons-from-optical-illusions/
We can partially improve bubble charts by adding data labels, but if you have too many bubbles, the labels will clutter the chart and make it look busy.
I can't seem to find a way to plot more than ten bubbles on a chart and need to know how to add more
@KW.. why would such a thing happen. I am sure you can add more bubbles that that. Can you tell us exactly what you are doing...
Example table:
A B C (size)
Me: 25 30 15%
Him: 30 22 11%
Her: 12 30 20%
I am trying to make a bubble chart where the Y axis is A, the X axis is B, and the size of the bubble is C. There should be only 3 bubbles. I keep ending up with six (with the labels being only "Me" and "Her"). My goal is to have three bubbles, one representing each person. Clearly I am doing something wrong. Can you help explain...?
Hi,
I wanted to add data labels to the bubbles. Each bubble represents a different company name. Excel allows me to add the size, legend, x axis values and y axis values. How do I add instead- Company A, B, C, D for the bubbles?
youon you have to choice every data for every company..
ex:create bubble for A company,after that click right> add data label> adjust data labels :format data labels and choose : series name.
i hop u will succeed .
[...] we create a bubble chart with 2 bubbles. 1 for the actual mustache & 1 for target [...]
If we want bubble size to be controlled by one column, but the bubble labels to be controlled by another column, how can this be achieved?
many thanks!!!!