Pictograph Visualization
A few months ago, I wrote about an alternative way to present fractions (parts of a whole) instead of using a typical and flawed pie chart. The first graphic below comes from BusinessWeek and the second one is DSA’s Excel created version.
Jon Peltier (Microsoft MVP) of Peltier Technical Services and PTS Blog, recently wrote me to tell me about a workbook in Excel, which contains VBA code to create something similar to our dollar visualization. The results, which only took me a few minutes using Jon’s workbook, are below in the third graphic. It’s a fairly useful tool to do something different for your audience.
Finally, the last graphic was created from a similar workbook in Excel by Andy Pope, Microsoft MVP. The workbook (link below) contains instructions regarding how Andy was able to accomplish splitting the image.
In the related section at the end of this post are links to the workbooks and web sites of the creators. Feel free to check them out! If you are interested in how I created the DSA Insights version, feel free to contact me and I can walk you through it.
Thank you Jon and Andy!
BusinessWeek Version:
DSA Insights Excel Version:
Jon Peltier Excel Version with Easy Macro:
Andy Pope Excel Version (different Picture) with instructions:
Original Post:
Spending InfoVis, DSA Insights
Resources:
Jon’s Workbook, Jon Peltier
PTS Blog, Jon Peltier
Version of splitting a graphic, Andy Pope
Andy’s Workbook, Andy Pope
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
May 16th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Tony - I’ll bite. What’s your technique? (Hint: here’s another easy blog post for you.)
May 16th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
@ Jon, I am now going to have a 3rd post to illustrate how this was done in Excel.
Simply put:
1) Picture
2) Horizontal Stacked Bar Chart
3) Text Boxes galore