I’m trying to figure out how to create “nice” panel charts in excel, where I’m currently attempting to do so in Stata. (See for example Figure 2.) I can easily do the individual excel chart, but my investigation online into making this a 2X2 set seems to involve using pivot tables, and even then I’m not quite convinced it will work out as I want it to. I wanted to reach out in the event that this is something you or others have done before – Excel trend figures side by side for comparison purposes…also known to some as panel charts. This allows the reader to view trend lines across different groupings over the same scale to make helpful comparisons.

The data are available here.

Here is the Excel file Ira suggested.

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I published this paper long ago on trends in obesity over people’s lives. The images from that paper can be found in this PPT file (the data is embedded in the charts).

I am trying to show the changes in obesity over time for birth cohorts, but I have been told that these graphs are really hard to understand. I am looking for feedback from others about how to more effectively communicate these trends. In this iteration, I will be creating an interactive version of the graphs, but am first looking for help on improving how the data are graphically displayed.

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Attached is the spreadsheet I’m working on as well as quick mock-up in Paint of what I’d like the graph to look like.

On the spreadsheet, column B represents each individual series I would like. As in, each cell in column B would be its own column of data on the chart, with two lines, one representing the trend of subscription ranking and one representing the trend of view ranking. One line will be columns C-D, and another separate line will be columns E-F.

As a note, I’ve made the rankings negative so that a jump to a better ranking is indicated by a line with a positive slope in the chart.

I’m hoping this is possible to do with excel, but so far all my efforts have been thwarted. I’m willing to use an app or other software for this, provided it doesn’t require programming skills.

Help!

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Dear HelpMeViz,

I wonder if you could give me some pointers. I am an economist, and my particular speciality is tracking global data. For this exercise, I am following approximately 400 datapoints a month, in Asia, Europe and the US.  At the moment, I have made only very limited attempts to visualize the results, by simply publishing a 6wk trendline, drawn in Excel. Here’s how it looks:

And by region. . . .

Very standard, rather dull and even, I’d say, slightly confusing (for the regional chart).

What I’d like to do is produce a daily ‘heat map’ schematic featuring the US, Eurozone, Britain, China, Japan, NE Asia and Australia (possibly India too), with a representation of how the 6wk trends are developing in each of these areas. So if things are going well in the US, that bit of the  map would show up in gradations of red (or whatever colour seems best), whilst if things are going badly in China, it shows up in the opposite colour. In an ideal world, it would also be nice if there could be a 3D element – in the case offered, the US rising red out of the page, whilst China sinks  blue down below.

I have been looking for mapping tools able to do this, but have so far found nothing that can help. Do you have any ideas?

Best wishes

**UPDATE: The data are now available here.

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I’ve got an issue that might have a hopefully simple solution, but if so, I can’t see it and couldn’t find an answer to it.

I have bar charts showing a time-series per x-axis category (across 12 weeks).

I would now like to show a second set of data organised in the same way (time-series across 12 weeks showing per x-axis category), however as a line-graph.

I’m not sure this is possible in the same chart, and I’m happy with this being in a second chart that I can overlay. Still, as I’m unsure as to how to go about this I guess my question is:

How do I organise a line-chart within each x-axis category? I appreciate that D3 can solve this elegantly, but unfortunately this needs to be in Excel for now.

Any other suggestions for better ways to visualize the data are certainly welcome.

(Excel data file)

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The problem is that the author doesn’t like using lines to connect across the Series because he think it leads the reader to think about a time series or a continuous outcome. If he just uses dots then it is harder for the eye to compare across the groups. Bar graphs are probably the best idea, but he wants to show all five Series, which he thinks may be too cluttered.

Another possible way of showing things would be to make a time series (he can generate the values for the other years) but thinks that approach still suffers from wanting to show too many dimensions at the same time.

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