15 Comments

• 

  Tim Wilson (@tgwilson)

  Aug 6, 2014 - Reply

  Great post! It seems like conditional formatting would have been able to get *really* close to the same small multiples result — just four separate conditional formatting rules (one for each column) to vary the color, and each rule setting the max to 100%. The one thing it couldn’t do is up the percentage at the top (right) of the bar — it would be stuck at the bottom (left).

  Am I missing something, or would that be a good alternative if looking to keep the data as data in cells rather than creating an actual chart?

  • 

    Ann K. Emery

    Aug 6, 2014 -

    Hi Tim,

    You’re right, the data bars and the small multiples chart are essentially identical in their proportions and patterns.

    The only difference is that data bars live within a spreadsheet and the small multiples chart can be pasted into a Word document or PowerPoint presentation.

    So, data bars for exploring, brainstorming, idea-generation, and then small multiples if something seems promising enough to warrant a chart.

    Thanks, Ann

• 

  Anne Beauchamp

  Aug 6, 2014 - Reply

  Thanks for the super-helpful post! I really dislike data tables and think this is a great solution. I practiced it using some data I had on hand but couldn’t get the horizontal axis labels right. How did you get the item descriptions at the top of the columns?
  Thanks!

  • 

    Ann K. Emery

    Aug 6, 2014 -

    Hi Anne,

    Great question. I used a very very complicated strategy: I added text boxes, and then matched the font color to the corresponding bars (which are matched to the organization’s RGB codes).

    The vertical labels are the same thing — to get the Overall, Gender, Race and Hispanic Origin, etc. labels to pop out, I simply overlayed the regular size 11 font with text boxes. For those, I had to make sure to “fill” the text boxes with white so that the original size 11 text didn’t show.

    Hope this helps! Ann

  • 

    Anne Beauchamp

    Aug 6, 2014 -

    Thanks, Ann!

• 

  Chris

  Aug 6, 2014 - Reply

  Nice post Ann. I really like the stacked bar small multiples approach. I literally used it for a project immediately after reading this post 😉

  • 

    Ann K. Emery

    Aug 6, 2014 -

    I knew you’d be an early adopter. 🙂 I hope it was useful for the project!

• 

  Ann K. Emery

  Aug 6, 2014 - Reply

  P.S. Thanks to Tim Wilson (@tgwilson) for sharing his related post with me – http://tim.webanalyticsdemystified.com/?p=2515. Tim outlines additional strategies for visualizing patterns from data tables, like heat maps, and discusses how he sometimes visualizes data from tables just to get a feel for the data, like my Option A and Option B here.

• 

  Jerome

  Aug 8, 2014 - Reply

  Hi Ann! just saw your tutorial in youtube and I am quite interested on How to automate dashboards using Excel and Word. Actually this is my first time to know your blog. I hope you have a tutorial on this one so that I could learn from you more. God bless!

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• 

  Ann K. Emery

  Sep 11, 2014 - Reply

  P.S. Here’s a recent blog post from Carrie Tanasichuk showing how she adapted this technique for her own project: http://ctanasichuk.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/data-visualization-principles-for-combining-several-charts/ Go check it out!

• 

  Nicholas

  Jan 3, 2015 - Reply

  Great Post, clear instructions and visualization. Bravo. I will this on one o
  f the projects.

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