Changing stubborn opinions with visualizations [case study]
We, analysts take pride in the fact that we tell stories. But what if you have a boss, client or colleague who wouldn’t buy the story?
This is a problem we face often. Let’s say your boss has stubborn opinion about something, like more advertising leads to more sales. You know the data doesn’t support this theory. But how do you change your boss’ mind?
Here is an interesting way, showcased in NY Times recently.
CP032: Rules for making legendary column charts
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In the 32nd session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s make legendary column charts.
What is in this session?
Column charts are everywhere. As analysts, we are expected to create flawless, strikingly beautiful & insightful column charts all the time. Do you know the simple rules that can help you create legendary column charts?
That is our topic for this podcast session.
In this podcast, you will learn
- Few personal announcements
- Rule 0: Start at zero
- Rule 1: Sort the chart
- Rule 2: Slap a title on it
- Rule 3: Axis + grid-lines vs. Lables
- Rule 4: Moderate formatting
- Conclusions
Revenue vs. Commission growth – Getting the message across [BYOD]
Situation: Our commissions are growing way faster than revenues
Let’s say you are looking revenues & sales commissions of your company for last few years. The data looks like this:
And you want to highlight the fact that commissions are growing faster than revenues.
So you plot YoY growth rates for revenues & commissions.
Problem: The chart of YoY growth rates is not convincing
Take a look at the chart. It doesn’t convey the message that we want. At best it says “revenue growth is less than commission growth”
How to convey the message “Commission growth is a problem for us”?
CP013: Is this a FIFA worldcup of late goals, lets ask Excel [How to analyze data to answer questions like these…]
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In the 13th session of Chandoo.org podcast, lets turn our attention to on-going FIFA worldcup and ask an important question.
What is in this session?
A week ago, we discussed “Has it been a late goal FIFA worldcup?” and used various charts & analysis techniques to answer the question. In podcast, lets tackle the same problem, understand various approaches to answer questions like these & shares some lessons for all the analysts.
Show Top 10 Values in Dashboards using Pivot Tables
A good dashboard must show important information at a glance and provide option to drill down for details.
Showing Top 10 (or bottom 10) lists in a dashboard is a good way to achieve this (see aside). Today we will learn an interesting technique to do this in Excel.
Show Months & Years in Charts without Cluttering
We make charts with date axis all the time. So, today we will learn how to set up axis settings in Excel so that Months & Years are shown neatly structured without cluttering your chart. See the example next to understand.
Excel Links – Happy Birthday Edition
First some personal matters. Today I am celebrating my 28th birthday. The last one year has been very good for us. We have been very busy parenting 2 hilarious and naughty twins, I moved back to India, quit my job and started a company. My business became a mild success crossing $100k revenues in 12 […]