Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Excel 2016: Charts!

Perhaps the most interesting and desirable new feature of Excel 2016 is the inclusion of several new types of Charts.  Most of us would agree that Visualization of data is key to making an impact on the users and viewers of our worksheets.  In this regard, it is widely thought that Excel was well overdue for an upgrade on its charts.

The New Charts are located at the bottom of the All Charts dialog, and can quite easily transform your data in new and wondrous ways (well, at least “wondrous” to us geeky sorts…).  There you will see the Treemap, Sunburst, Pareto (under Histogram), Box & Whisker, and Waterfall, additions.

Treemap
Likely the most interesting and question-provoking chart you’ve seen in a long while. Previously only available in Excel through VBA, this square-formatted chart quickly reveals relative sizes of your data fields.

Sunburst
This one is just plain Cool!  This newly innate chart is a visually appealing way of presenting relational datasets together in a compact form.  It can be a tough one to understand, but it sure gains your audience’s attention!

Pareto
A Pareto is a type of histogram that contains columns sorted in descending order and an adjacent line that indicates the cumulative total percentage. Pareto charts are considered one of the basic tools of Six Sigma as it facilitates seeing the most common problems or issues.

Box and Whisker
Having nothing whatsoever to do with cats, this chart is an exploratory graphic used to show the distribution of a dataset at a glance.


The New Charts in Excel 2016!  Another welcome feature to look forward to!

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