Data visualization is about finding and communicating patterns. But here is an often-forgotten truism: patterns are not some kind of ready-to-wear knowledge. You can look at a chart and have an epiphany and the person next to you can dismiss it as useless. Let’s see why. Is this person a friend of yours? If you … Read more
There are several objects in Excel you can make a map with. If you want to use shapes, you can follow my tutorial. You can also use a scatter plot. The map above uses cells and conditional formatting. So, here is how to do it (this example used population data): Get a table from the US Census … Read more
Are you sure you can recognize an Excel chart from miles away? I thought that too. Then I started playing with some data visualization historical milestones and now I’m not so sure. Trying to recreate these charts in Excel is a great way to improve your Excel skills and pay a humble tribute to the data … Read more
Choropleth maps are the pie charts of cartography. Both can show us a simple pattern, but that’s a very low starting point. And both have severe perceptual issues. One of the issues with maps is how to define classes. Gregor published last Friday an interesting post and I wanted to play with the same data, percentage of … Read more