The set of choropleth map templates published in my recent post was well received by the readers of Clearly and Simply.
Paulo, one of my few but faithful readers from Portugal sent me an email including a choropleth map of Portugal by districts. He was kind enough to allow me to publish it here and share it with you:
Download Choropleth Map Portugal (Microsoft Excel 2003, 196.5K)
Muito obrigado, Paulo.
The previous post discussed Choropleth Maps in general, briefly described how to implement them with Microsoft Excel and provided a couple of templates for free download.
The post was focused on the classic version of a Choropleth Map, visualizing the measurements of a statistical variable in different geographical regions on a map by color intensity: the greater the measurement, the darker the color.
The classic version is limited to one variable. This follow-up post describes how to enhance a Choropleth Map in order to visualize more than one variable by using several colors and includes the visualization of “The Great Pop vs Soda Controversy” as an example for free download.
The dashboard of Lithuania at a glance used a county based map of Lithuania to visualize the geographical distribution of the population by color intensity: the darker the color, the higher the value.
Very often, this type of geographical visualization is called thematic map, heat map or statistical map. The less known, but correct expression however is Choropleth Map.
The idea of how to create Choropleth Maps with Microsoft Excel – as brilliant as it is simple – is the brainchild of Tushar Mehta, Microsoft Excel MVP. I simply “borrowed” his idea and code and put it to effective use on the Lithuanian Dashboard.
Many readers of Clearly and Simply have been interested in this technique, but unfortunately I was not allowed to provide an unlocked workbook of the Lithuanian Census Dashboard (see comments on Lithuania at a glance). That’s why I thought it might be a good idea to write this post including a couple of templates for Choropleth Maps with Microsoft Excel for free download.
As a follow-up to my review of Fabrice Rimlinger’s Sparklines for XL, I recently published a post including a download link to the Excel workbook with the chart gallery used in the review article.
I didn’t provide a download link to the chart gallery in the original post, because I was convinced nobody would be interested in this simple list of Sparklines for XL chart types. What a misjudgment! The Sparklines for XL Chart Gallery is the most popular download here on clearly and simply.
Recently Fabrice and Nixnut published a new version of Sparklines for XL (3.3 alpha 7), including two new chart types: area charts and horizon charts. I thought you might be interested in an updated version of the chart gallery as well.
Here is the file for free download:
Download Chart Gallery Sparklines for XL version 3.3 (Excel 2003, zipped, 382.5K)
The workbook is an Excel 2003 stand-alone file, i.e. the VBA code is included, no need for installing the add-in.
Please be advised that I made some minor changes to Fabrice’s and Nixnut’s original implementation:
I commented out a couple of lines of code to have a stand-alone workbook without asking for installing the add-in and without creating the menus and the toolbar
I made a minor change of the code, because the shapes have not been grouped to one object with the original implementation
I changed the first parameter of the function ScaleLine from “t” to “b”
All of these changes are highlighted by a comment and should be easy to find.
The previous post discussed different methods of calculating week numbers and their effects on analysis and visualizations of data on a weekly basis. The post was focused on using Microsoft Excel.
However, the challenge caused by different week numbering methods is not restricted to Microsoft Excel. I guess every data analysis and visualization software faces this problem.
And so does my favorite: Tableau. There is no built-in way to switch between different week numbering methods in Tableau. But Tableau has the flexibility for an easy-to-use solution. This post provides all information of how to use ISO 8601 week numbers in Tableau, including a Tableau packaged workbook for free download.