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Pie charts: a neverending discussion

We all know how found of pie charts Tufte is: A table is nearly always better than a dumb pie chart; the only worse design than a pie chart is several of them, for then the viewer is asked to compare...

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The business analyst t-shirt

______________________ Want to create better dashboards? Try the Excel Dashboard Tutorial. Post from: Excel Charts Blog. The business analyst t-shirt The original post is titled The business analyst...

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10 x 10 Tips to improve your (Excel) charts: pie charts

I know, I know, no one likes pie charts, but I can’t ignore them. A pie chart compares proportions but it is of limited use: either the data is too complex and a pie chart can’t handle it, or it is too...

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Uncommon knowledge about pie charts

I’d like to answer or comment on search queries that bring readers to my blog. Here are some of them involving pie charts: What is the usefulness of pie chart in research? Research found that many pie...

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The Best Pie Charts Come From Germany

Best Pie Chart Award (clean and balanced. Your perception may not be great at comparing angles, but who cares?)   2th Place (also nice, but too many slices, and I don’t like the title around the pie)...

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Pie Charts – A Devil’s Advocate Point of View

In what seems to be a post-vacation syndrome, I am in the mood for pie charts. I see them everywhere, even in car logos. Actually, I am more in the mood to defy current “crowd wisdom” about pie chats....

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The Unbearable Lightness of Pie Charts [Data Visualization for Excel Users]

Well, a data visualization book cannot avoid pie charts, so here it is, a page about pie charts for my tutorial Data Visualization for Excel Users. Enjoy and comment, please…   ______________________...

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The best of two worlds: the scatterplot pie

The best chart is always task-dependent, but let me assume that you would choose the scatterplot as the best chart and the pie as the worst. They are like water and oil: impossible to mix them! Are...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Excel dashboard: Using Excel for catchment area analysis

I’m sure you’re familiar with the Walmart growth map. A basic visualization looks like this:  Obviously this has a lot of potential for a more design-oriented approach, and there are many examples...

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Why I don’t like bar charts

Pies charts are fun to use, but it’s almost impossible for grown-ups to find a good reason for using them at work. So your first, safe-for-work choice is a bar chart. The boring bar chart. I don’t like...

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Infographics vs. Data Visualization

People keep asking what the difference is between data visualization and infographics. Since I’m not completely satisfied with the available answers I thought I could return to the subject and write my...

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Chart redraw: Troops Vs. Cost (Time Magazine)

This chart is very similar to the original, published this week in the Time magazine: I don’t like dual-axes charts. Actually, they don’t like themselves and they beg for a connected scatterplot, so...

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A classification of chart types

A few weeks ago, I needed a classification of chart types for my book, and reinventing the wheel was the last thing I wanted to do. I started with Andrew’s classification and the Juice Analytics...

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Easy way to make bullet charts and boxplots in Excel

I am sure I’m missing something here, but I don’t understand why making bullet charts and boxplots have to be so overly complex in Excel. Instead of messing around with bars and scales and secondary...

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For the Greek hairdressers, the party’s over

In the beginning of the Greek debt crisis, Greek hairdressers became one of the symbols of a badly managed country (they could retire at 50 with full benefits). But there is more and more interesting...

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Find the revolution

I have a challenge for you. The chart above displays the evolution of infant mortality rate in Portugal. The years in the x-axis are not labeled on purpose. In one of those years there was a left-wing...

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