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Effective Charts and Dashboards for Excel users

Data Visualization Blog

Strange L-shaped trends

There is not much of a story in the expected evolution of US population, according to the United Nations estimates and projections (1950-2100): (You’ll see in a moment why there is a vertical line in 2005.) Things get a little more interesting if you split population by

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Making Excel maps without VBA

Making Excel maps without VBA

If you want to make a choropleth/thematic map in Excel without programming perhaps conditional formatting is all you need. Here is how to do it: Select a few hundred columns and rows; Set width and height to 3 (more or less, depending on the resolutions you want);

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Finally revealed: the optimal number of categories in a pie chart

Finally revealed: the optimal number of categories in a pie chart

It’s very simple, really: you do not compare proportions in a pie chart. Because a pie chart is not a comparison chart, it’s a part-to-whole chart. When you do this: what you really want to do is to compare each slice to the whole, like this: because,

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Chart: Education vs. GDP in Europe

Chart: Education vs. GDP in Europe

(click to enlarge) I have a single and very simple resolution for 2013: make more charts. Simple charts, just to play with the data. Here is the first one. I like scatter plots with a time dimension, even though data points often look like drunken sperm. When

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Context comes in many ways and shapes

We (datavis folks) like to believe that one of the key advantages of charts over tables is that charts are much better at providing context, displaying patterns and so on, while a tables “merely” gives you the exact value. Fortunately, life is not that simple. Many people

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Aesthetics be damned

Aesthetics be damned

I’ll assume that you are not paid for your artistic skills. You’re a mere mortal in a corporate environment, trying to make sense of your data and making rational decisions if possible. You make charts all the time, but you don’t really know if this new “data visualization”

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Qlikview vs Tableau? I have to choose and I’m not sure

Qlikview vs Tableau? I have to choose and I’m not sure

Most users love Excel, non-users hate it. When it comes to data visualization, Excel is generally dispised, except by those that have to make dozens of charts every single day. I call this the Excel Stockolm Syndrome. These are the forsaken data visualization users that keep making 3D

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Bars and lines: méfiez-vous des morceaux choisis

So, this data visualization thing is new to you, but you already know enough to avoid basic mistakes (pies, 3D…). While playing with the data, you make these two charts: You already know that a bar chart helps you to compare data points, while a line chart is

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And now you know why

I spent the last two weekends among kings and witches, foxes and wolves, dumb men and devious women, visiting castles in Scotland and villages in Africa. Two weekends of great storytelling. One little thing bothered me, though. Explicitly or not, many stories ended with the words “and

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Bamboo charts: People at risk of poverty or social exclusion

Bamboo charts: People at risk of poverty or social exclusion

Here is the percentage of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the European Union and a few other countries: We are going to resist the urge to identify them and use our preconceptions against them. Let’s dig deeper instead. Some groups are more exposed

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