From the exercise of chapter 4: *****Exercise 4 Attached******
Scout out some public data visualizations (such as in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times) and look for different ways that people show comparison to a benchmark—sometimes it’s a dashed line, sometimes it’s one consistent brand color, and sometimes it’s a simple x on the graph. Find three different ways others have shown comparisons to a target or benchmark.
If you tried to add the benchmark line to the spark-line in that last example, you probably noticed that you can’t format the benchmark line to make it a different color. Or so you think! This is where code comes in handy, as discussed in Chapter 3. Grab code (with gratitude) from this site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff197606%28v=office.15%29.aspx and test out different colors!
Believe it or not, some pretty amazing people have developed plug-ins for Excel that make bullet chart development a relative breeze. Some are free and some cost a bit. Search “bullet chart Excel plug in” to find them. But be a little careful. My plug-in worked fine in Excel 2010 but didn’t work at all when I upgraded to Excel 2013. They can break. They won’t operate for someone else who gets your file with your lovely bullet graphs. For those reasons, I prefer to rely on what Excel contains on its own. Even so, it’s worth it to take a look around at the plug-ins available. Pick one and plug it into Excel. Make a bullet graph and then see if you can reverse-engineer it. Try to explain how the plug-in is maximizing different parts of Excel to craft the graph. Submit all required documentation
Category: Visualization
This is from the exercise of Chapter 3:
Small multiples are such an elegant solution to so many graphing problems. Find a graph you think is overly complicated (check your other textbooks for this course or search on #dataviz on Twitter and scroll through the results). See if you can remake the complicated visual using small multiples.
These Excel ninja graphs make you feel good, but they can also leave you feeling a bit daunted by the idea of churning them out at scale. Three possible solutions that I want you to try:
1. Save the finished graph as a new chart type. Just right-click on the graph, and you should see a menu option called Save as Template. It opens some magical place on your computer—don’t move from that spot. Just name your new chart type and save. Then you’ll see a new area in your regular menu of chart choices called Templates. This process will get you 60% to 85% of the way there, depending on the graph type. You’ll still have to do some adjusting, but it gives you a head start in your graph development. Try making a template for a slope graph.
2. More advanced users should try recording a macro. Sounds intimidating, but it isn’t that scary once you get started. Macros are accessible through a new tab you have to tell Excel to add to your toolbar. Follow File to Options and then look in the Customize Ribbon menu. From there you can add the Developer tab to your ribbon. In it, you’ll see a button called Record Macro. Essentially, this records your movements around the spreadsheet and writes code based on those movements. So, you begin recording the macro (name it after your graph type), then make your ninja graph, and then press Stop Recording. In the future, you’ll simply go to the Macros menu and play your recorded steps. Try recording a macro for one of the graphs in this chapter. Be patient. It takes some trial and error. Skip ahead to Chapter 9 for more details on macros for slopegraphs and dot plots.
3. When you recorded your macro, the code Excel wrote in the background is a powerful, if intimidating, way to generate copies of graphs with speed. In Excel-speak, this is called Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA, code, and people have written dozens of coding instructions to make Excel do all sorts of cartwheels and tricks. Conduct a quick Internet search on VBA code to copy graphs with new data. You’ll see several options that you can dump into a new Visual Basic window (right next to the Macros button). Again, code can be complex to work with, so allow yourself a lot of time . . . and coffee.
Submit any requried documentation.
A few points of clarification:
Q1. You are creating a template – a screen grap of that would surfice.
Q2. You can view the steps/code generated in creating a Macro – that is what you submit – here is quick tutorial on doing that:
Q3.Upload the VBA code that you found to work and some screengrabs showing how you tested it,