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Tag: charting

A quick Excel tip for you while on a long bike trip…,

Hi friends,

I have a surprise for you. Between the late night world-cup matches & my reinvigorated thirst for biking, I have difficulty finding time to write a long & detailed article for you. So I thought why not say hello to you and share an Excel tip while I am on a biking trip.

Go ahead and check it out. Its just 4 minutes.

Watch it below or on our YouTube channel.

Is this a FIFA worldcup of late goals? Lets ask Excel

Just like millions of viewers around the world, I too have been spending hours watching FIFA world cup football matches on TV. I don’t like spending hours watching TV. But when its FIFA world-cup time (which is once every 4 years), I am glued to the idiot box. Blame it on PaWaRa, my school teacher in 8th grade who instilled this passion.

So while watching the match day before yesterday (it was Holland vs. Chile), the commentator said, “This has been a world-cup of late goals” as both teams maintained 0-0 until 77 minute mark when Leroy Fer scored a goal for Holland.

That got me thinking,

Is this really a world-cup of late goals?

But I quickly brushed away the thought to focus on the match.

Later yesterday, I went looking and downloaded all the goal data for 2006, 2010 & 2014 FIFA world-cup matches (2014 data for first 36 matches).

Lets examine the hypothesis “2014 has been a world-cup of late goals”.

Create a line chart with bands [tutorial]

Here is an interesting scenario.

Imagine you are responsible for customer satisfaction at ACME Inc. Every month you track customer satisfaction rate for the 3 products you sell which are conveniently named Product A, B & C.

You also have bands for the satisfaction rating.

  • Rating of 85% or below is Average
  • Rating between 85% & 95% is OK
  • Rating above 95% is good

At the end of the year, you want to visualize the ratings for last 12 months for 3 products along with bands.

Something like above.

Unfortunately, there is no “Insert Banded line chart” button in Excel. So what to do?

That is what we will learn today. Ready?

CP004: Can I Pie Chart in Public? Discussion about Pie charts, their merits and drawbacks, when to use & when to avoid them

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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In the 4th session of Chandoo.org podcast, lets talk about Pie charts.

Pie charts evoke strong opinions among analysts & managers. Some people love them and can’t have enough of them in reports. Others despise them and go to any lengths to avoid them. And that is why we are going to talk about them in this session.

You will learn,

  • Special, secret transmission from guest stars
  • What is a pie chart?
  • Why they work? 2 reasons
  • Why they don’t work ? 4 reasons
  • Cousins & siblings of Pie charts
    • Donut charts
    • Gauge charts (speedometer)
    • 3D pies
    • Area charts
    • Bubble charts
  • 4 Situations when making a pie chart is ok
  • Alternatives to Pie charts
  • Mistakes you should avoid
  • About the resources
  • Conclusions

Excel links – What is your next Excel book edition?

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. -Groucho Marx

We don’t have a dog (yet), but we have a lot of books. Anytime I am in a bookshop, I feel like a mosquito in fat-camp. So you can imagine me smacking my lips when I saw your suggestions for favorite Excel books recently. There were more than 50 different books recommended by our readers. Of course I cannot buy all the 50 in one go. That would make Jo (my wife) angry. So I bought one that most of you recommended.

Ctrl + Shift + Enter by Mike Girvin

It is a book about array formulas, advanced formulas and data analysis techniques. I am eagerly waiting for the delivery to devour it. Once I am done with it, I will post a review here.

What about you? What Excel book are you reading now? Please share in comments.

I won’t eat donut with a thread inside, but lets make one anyway!

Today lets take a stroll outside what Excel can do and make something fancy, fun and may be useful.

Nowadays, many newspapers, websites and magazines are featuring info-graphics. An info-graphic is a collection of shiny, colorful & data-full charts (or often pieces of text.) In many of these info-graphics, you can see threaded-donut charts. Not sure what that is..? It is not same as the blasphemy of spoiling a soft, sweet, supple donut with a piece of string. No one should be excused for an offense like that.

What I am talking about is shown above