Clearly and Simply

Tag: heat map excel

  • Heat Maps with Individual Color Scales in Excel

    How to create Heat Maps in Microsoft Excel using individual Color Scales to support the analytical insights into the distribution of the data

    Heat Maps with individual Color Scales IntroIn his brilliant guest post Analytical Color Scales for Heat Maps, Ron Whale explained, how color scales can efficiently support the process of analyzing data.

    Applying different, thoroughly designed color schemes can help to gain deeper insights into the distribution of data, to identify outliers, to focus on special points of interest, to find similar groupings and more.

    In a nutshell: switching between color scales of a Choropleth or Heat Map helps you to understand your data.

    Whilst Ron was developing his great palette of color schemes for using them on a Choropleth Map, they are equally helpful for a much simpler visualization technique: a Heat Map of a table (or range) of numbers.

    Microsoft Excel does provide a built-in feature to create a Heat Map on a range of numbers: Conditional Formatting. However, this is limited regarding the configuration of the color scales and it does not provide the option to easily switch between color schemes for supporting the data analysis process.

    Today’s post provides a technique to overcome this shortcoming of Excel: a VBA-based solution to easily apply any given color scale to an Excel range with only two mouse clicks. As always, the post comes with the workbook for free download.

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  • Analytical Color Scales for Heat Maps

    More sophisticated Color Scales to increase the analytical insights provided by Heat Maps or Choropleth Maps – a Guest Post by Ron Whale

    The workbook posted with the recent article Geographical Flow Maps in Excel (Part 3 of 3) provided new color scales, I never published before. Truth be told, I did not develop these schemes. Ron Whale did. Ron generously agreed to share them here and he is even kind enough to explain the scales, their use cases and the value they add to analytical Heat Maps in today’s guest post. Enjoy.

    Analytical Color Scales IntroJust a few months ago, I found this website and discovered a great Choropleth mapping spreadsheet. I really like the color mapping schemes that have been developed. As I worked through the program and played with the mapping colors, I began to understand that the colors could be used to highlight additional data details in the map.

    So, I came up with a number of special purpose color schemes designed to enhance specific aspects of the data and added them in with some of the original color scales. As the color schemes grouped into different visual purposes, I named the new colors to better describe the type of data that would be highlighted when using that scale.

    I thought I would share my twist on the color scales and will explain my thoughts about the different scale types below.

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