How do Excel and Tableau compare when actually making a chart? I couldn’t find such post, so I wrote one. I’ll create a simple chart, a population pyramid, and comment on the process. To make it a bit more interesting, we’ll compare a certain population in 1986 with the estimates for 2050. The Data Let’s … Read more
After creating wordless instructions for making charts in Excel, here is the Tableau version. This post discusses similarities and differences between both tools. Check out the e-books at the bottom! How to make a chart To make a chart, you must select the data, encode the data into visual objects, format those objects, and add text … Read more
An ebook that uses visual instructions to show how to make charts in Excel. Non-English speakers should be able to follow these instructions.
If you are an Excel user, are you aware of how flexible it is? Do you really take advantage of this flexibility when making charts? You can simply enter a few values and some (almost) random cells and visualize them. You can add empty rows or use dummy variables. When it comes to formatting, you … Read more
Microsoft is apparently waking up and getting a bit more serious regarding visualization in Excel. Excel 2016 gets a few more chart types but, except for treemaps, nothing really new. We could make them with a little of work, but it’s nice to have them ready to use. Here are the new chart types in … Read more
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); Set font size to 1; Place a map … Read more
In data visualization, animation is overrated. OK, it’s an interesting option if you can see a clear pattern emerging when displaying data over time/space (and, thanks to animation, we were introduced to this communicator extraordinaire named Hans Rosling). It’s fun to make an animated GIF like the one above, but you must see animation as … 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