Google officially announces 10 billion app downloads in Excel
As an Android fan, I am happy to learn that the Android Market has surpassed 10 billion downloads. I found this pretty looking 3D column chart.
I have never been convinced that 3D charts are good enough for serious business use. But this chart made me think again. The exponential growth trend jumped at me. Critical milestones were highlighted in rounded textboxes which were freindly to my eyes. I’m not interested in the specifics but I got the strong message that Android is growing strongly from the chart.
I recreated this chart in Excel using a 3D column chart type.
Use the following Excel 3D Rotation settings and with the right colours, this chart can be done quite easily.
To learn more about how to create beautiful charts like these in Microsoft Excel, check out this workshop: Beautiful Excel Charts
Do it in Excel: Ring charts are better Pie charts
Pie charts are a circular chart divided into sectors, illustrating proportion. I remembered learning them when I was in primary school. Apparently it was invented by this person called William Playfair in 1801.
An ancient pie chart showing the proportions of the Turkish Empire in different regions.
Pie charts are simple to understand but rather limited because:
1. Can only show a single data series.
2. Can only show limited slices else it becomes cluttered.
Here is a clever twist by using ring charts instead. The following chart was created in Microsoft Excel.
The awesomeness of this beautiful ring chart are:
1. Shows multiple series data instead of just one data series. I’ve taken advantage of this property by showing aggregated revenue data in the outer ring. The inner ring shows a detailed breakdown of monthly revenues.
2. Presents multiple slices of information without being overly cluttered. This needs a careful use of colours though.
To create this ring chart in Microsoft Excel, use this data format.
To learn more about how to create beautiful charts like these in Microsoft Excel, check out this workshop: Beautiful Excel Charts
Your own American Deficit/Debt Chart in Microsoft Excel
In the United States Congress there are currently a number of disagreements between Democrats and Republicans regarding the United States debt. On August 2, 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act of 2011, averting a possible financial default. This was the background story of this beautifully rendered chart of the USA public debt in the August 2011 issue of the TIME magazine.
Components of the USA deficit in the last decade from TIME magazine.
Follow these steps to create your own American Deficit chart in Microsoft Excel.
1. Go to the U.S. Bureau of Public Debt portal to extract the data set.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
2. Punch in a start and end date. The portal will generate a list of figures.
3. Select and copy the data set from the web page.
4. In Microsoft Excel, paste the figures as Unicode else it will not work properly. Click in Microsoft Excel: Home Ribbon->Paste->Paste Special->Unicode.
5. Plot out the figures as an Excel chart.
Singapore General Election Results 2011 Microsoft Excel Chart-Part2
This is an alternative interpretation of my previous Excel chart on the 2011 Singapore General Election results by James C Lee.
Tornado chart in Excel
Below was my original version in a previous post.
Click to see full version.
In many ways, it is a better version compared to mine. The tight Excel chart was able to show with clarity specific election results between the People’s Action Party with the various opposition in all 26 constituencies. The colour used in the chart was in sync with the chart title which enhanced clarity. The best part of this chart was at a glance, it could tell which side was the clear winner, and when studied in detail each row was a blow by blow account of the election results.
Singapore General Election Results 2011 in an Excel Chart
Down load a full size version below.
This is an Excel chart to summarise the lastest election results of Singapore. The People’s Action Party has won almost every contested area in Singapore. They secured 81 out of 87 seats against the total opposition. Total popular vote share of PAP: 60.1%
Download an animated powerpoint version here.
Excel Chart of Nuclear Radiation Levels near Fukushima
On Friday 11 March 2011 a 9.0-magnitude undersea earthquake off the coast of Japan caused crippling damage to nuclear reactors at the Fukushima I and II Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma. Fears of significant radiation leaks led to a massive evacuation for over 45,000 people in the area.
Japan has released some data about radioactivity levels around the Fukushima nuclear plants.
Fukuyama Nuclear Plant I. Administration office south.
I reinterpreted the original chart into a heat map using Excel. Using large “bubbles” and a gradient colour scheme I emphasized each data point and showed how radiation “cools” as time goes by in this Excel chart.
Reinterpreted version using gradient colours to show a movement of values.
Radiation at the main gates.
Radiation at the western gates.
Charts in FundSuperMart suck!
FundSuperMart is a Singapore produced magazine covering investment insights and trends on mutual funds. I picked up a copy at a 7-11 store and thumbed it through. I liked the articles. They appear thoughtfully written and are supported by charts.
The glaring problem is every chart looked amateurish. I have the feeling they were created by some 2nd year college student from an engineering faculty. It’s hard to have kind words when I see charts like these:
Axis labels that are bigger than the columns in the chart! What a waste of editorial space for nothing of value.
This is worse. The combined space for the labels and legend is bigger than the chart itself. They could have devoted the space to comment on the trend instead.
It’s obvious the magazine is fond of using legends and coloured lines. But it adds clutter and makes me seasick constantly having to flit my eyes between the legend and the line charts.
Florescence green, lime green and purple. This chart is more colourful than a bag of M&Ms. This magazine does not have a consistent visual style for charts which IMO adds clutter and confusion to the reader.
Pie charts with too many slices cannot show distinct distribution patterns. Charts that do not have strong messages are pointless!
At the last page there is an infographic that tries to present some global population facts. I got lost after Gender…
Frankly, I can’t take this magazine seriously like a Bloomberg publication if they continue to produce slipshod charts like these.
Making Beautiful Excel Charts is Simple
Have you ever told yourself that creating great looking Excel charts is hard? Well it’s not. You only need to understand the only reason we create charts is to aid comprehension of a trend. Once you understand this, you can start to create charts that’s easier to read and understand than text!
First, this is not a good way to design effective charts. There is unneccesary clutter with too many colours, complex font and a legend that needs mental processing by the reader.
There is unneccesary clutter with too many colours, complex font and a legend that needs mental processing by the reader.
The basic way to create beautiful and effective charts in Excel is to remove everything that is superfluous. I took this idea to the extreme and designed a minimalist chart with the same data. By removing clutter, clarity is enhanced!
A cleaner font was used, simple colours and data labels made the chart much easier to read and understand.
To learn more about how to create beautiful charts like these in Excel, check out this workshop: Beautiful Excel Charts
Excel Line Charts with Elegant Dates
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.
A neat horizontal axis by using only a single month label for each month
It uses alternating blocks in the plot area to indicate passing months.
The exercise wasn’t very challenging after all. I managed to capture the nice features of the original chart. To create the clean horizontal date axis, I used a column with the formula “=IF(DAY(A2)=1,A2,”")”. This formula only displays a date if it is the 1st day of the month. The alternating month blocks was created with an area chart using a column of formulas like this: “=IF(MOD(MONTH(A2),2),3000,NA())”. This creates a pulse train that varies between 0 and 3000 across months.
To learn more about how to create beautiful charts like these in Excel, check out this workshop: Beautiful Excel Charts
BP Oil Spill shown in a Microsoft Excel Chart
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.
To learn more about how to create beautiful charts like these in Excel, check out this workshop: Beautiful Excel Charts
