Category Archives: Sparklines

Data Visualization – a real world example

Posted on March 2, 2010 by XLCubedBlog

In the following example we work through a real world example of a data visualization. We’ve chosen an example that involves Operations data – this is fairly non-domain specific so hopefully it can demonstrate some important points. The first, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Analytics, BI, Case Studies, Charts, Dashboard, Reporting, Sparklines, Visualization | 3 Comments

Font Based Charting – Redistributing MicroCharts fonts

Posted on November 18, 2008 by XLCubedBlog

MicroCharts our Excel sparkline tool enhances Excel with sparklines, bullet graphs and other in-cell charts. As MicroCharts is a font based charting technology you can utilize all the rich Excel text formatting capabilities: Text alignment Text orientation Font size Conditional … Continue reading →

Posted in Sparklines | 1 Comment

Fit a Micro Chart to Cell

Posted on September 7, 2008 by XLCubedBlog

Ever wondered how to get a Micro Bar Chart or a bullet graph that automatically changes the width when you change the cell width? The key to fitting a MicroChart into a cell is the CELL() function. The CELL function … Continue reading →

Posted in Charts, Sparklines | Tagged | 2 Comments

Validate Your Tables with Micro (Control) Charts

Posted on August 6, 2008 by XLCubedBlog

Jorge suggested in a recent post to Use Charts to Validate Your Tables. He used a data set of the US census bureau that had some incorrect data in it. Creating a simple line chart on the data set immediately … Continue reading →

Posted in Sparklines | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Missing Link (Part 2)

Posted on July 29, 2008 by XLCubedBlog

The Internet has introduced us to the great idea of providing more detail with just a click using hyperlinks. Now our new, free Excel add-in lets you do just that in your Excel dashboard. As Andreas mentioned last time, our … Continue reading →

Posted in Sparklines | 7 Comments

Graphical Table – Abortion Data 1980 – 2003

Posted on July 22, 2008 by XLCubedBlog

Here the history of the Abortion data set 1) Jorge used some U.S. Census Bureau data (original Excel file) to visualize the abortion ratio as a small multiples chart, 2) In Small Multiples – Abortion Data 1980-2003, I have written … Continue reading →

Posted in Charts, Sparklines | Tagged | 6 Comments

Graphical Tables – An Alternative to Treemaps

Posted on June 11, 2008 by XLCubedBlog

Sean blogged the other day about using a treemap to visualize the drivers of the Australian Inflation. He got inspired to create a treemap by an NYT article that used an interactive version of the following treemap: This chart looks … Continue reading →

Posted in Sparklines | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Small charts are beautiful

Posted on May 8, 2008 by XLCubedBlog

Well, since you are reading this, I’ll assume that you took the red pill, so let’s keep moving and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes. We saw that people usually design charts larger than they need to be. … Continue reading →

Posted in Sparklines | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Sparklines, microcharts and why resolution matters

Posted on May 8, 2008 by XLCubedBlog

Size matters, and (chart-wise) the smaller the better. In this series of posts we’ll discuss how you can greatly improve your data analysis and communication efficiency just by designing smaller charts. Reducing chart size forces us to remove unnecessary junk, … Continue reading →

Posted in Sparklines | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment