BP Oil Spill shown in a Microsoft Excel Chart

Posted by admin on Monday, July 12, 2010 · 2 Comments 

On 20 April 2010, a BP oil well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest offshore spill in U.S. history. This Microsoft Excel line chart illustrates some key events 2 months after the explosion and BP’s stock price using a common Date horizontal axis.

The resulting chart is rich in information yet it’s not cluttered. The key relationship between stock price, event and dates are tied up using the “Lollipop Approach” described earlier.

See the full pic: BP oil spill infographic in Excel (full resolution: 792x448).

references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill. http://www.ft.com.

Related posts:

  1. Lollipop approach to clarify Microsoft Excel line charts Traditional Microsoft Excel line charts have a common problem. It...

Comments

2 Responses to “BP Oil Spill shown in a Microsoft Excel Chart”
  1. AusSteelMan says:
    August 24, 2010 at 8:40 am

    Nice indeed.

    I am assuming a 2 series stacked line chart, or I suppose it could be 2 series line chart with the comment series as the first series so that the second series is then “on top”, hence the error bars being solid only.

    I am also guessing the event labels are the data series showing “Label” or the use of the a chart labeler add-in

    thanks,
    ASM

    Reply
  2. CH Leong says:
    August 29, 2010 at 7:10 pm

    You got the basic recipe right.

    Reply

Speak Your Mind

Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!


beautiful-dates-in-chart

Elegant Dates in Line Charts

Aug 29, 2010 | Discuss

I came across this stock chart in the Kuala Lumpur’s edition of the Business Times while I was in Malaysia. The chart has an elegant treatment of dates. I have seen this sort of designs in many magazines and wanted an afternoon challenge to do this in Excel. The exercise wasn’t very challenging after all. [...]

Continue Reading