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You’ll agree we interpret visual content faster than words and numbers.
Scientific researches show that our brains interpret visual content, such as charts, graphs, and maps, 60,000 times faster than texts and figures.
Visualization charts play a critical role in today’s businesses by empowering data-backed decisions and providing insights for continuous improvement.
You need charts and graphs for your data story to be credible and compelling. Besides, you need tools to help you access charts.
Excel is arguably among the most-used data visualization tools. It has been there for a long time and is familiar to many. But to generate readymade graphs for your data stories, you’ve got to think beyond the Excel spreadsheet.
Why?
The spreadsheet tool produces very basic charts that require extra time and effort to edit. However, you don’t have to do away with Excel. You can transform it into a reliable data visualization tool by installing third-party applications (add-ins).
In this blog, you’ll learn:
Before we delve right into the meaty part of the blog post, let go through a couple of definitions.
Graphs are used to illustrate relationships in your data visually. The importance of graphs and charts, especially during data analysis, cannot be ignored.
Visualization graphs act as the bridge between raw data and insights. You can use them to display relationships, trends, and outliers that exist in your data.
The first graph is attributed to the 19th-century Englishman James Sylvester, one of the pioneer mathematicians interested in visualization.
Graphs are visual representations used to display patterns, trends, and relationships of key metrics in raw data. A graph shows this information by representing it as a shape.
There’re 6 main categories of visualization designs you can use for your data stories, namely:
In the coming sections, we’ll use a chart from mentioned categories (above) in examples.
What is the purpose of a graph? To address the aforementioned questions, you also have to think about tools.
Yes, you read that right.
You cannot separate graphs from tools. You need an intuitive tool that’s loaded with ready-made charts. Excel is not the tool we’re talking about in this context.
Why?
Excel comes with pretty basic charts and graphs, which require additional time to edit. Besides, its library has a limited number of charts, graphs, and maps. In today’s business landscape, the importance of graphs and charts cannot be stressed enough. You need a tool that can help you harness insights into your data efficiently and faster.
Here’s the deal.
You can transform your Excel into a visualization juggernaut by installing add-ins.
The add-in we’ve tested rigorously and recommend to you is ChartExpo.
ChartExpo is a cloud-hosted add-in that transforms your Excel spreadsheet app into a highly responsive data visualization tool.
What is the purpose of a graph? ChartExpo answers the aforementioned question by providing you with unlimited access to ready-made and visually appealing charts for your data stories.
You can follow the guide on ChartExpo for Excel add-In for installation purpose. Once it is installed successfully you can find the add-in in Excel by going to insert menu and click on My Apps.
You will find below screen and you can click select the ChartExpo and click on Insert.
If you are not already logged-in, it may ask you for the log-in for the first time. Otherwise you will be able to see the list of charts as shown below.
In this example, we’ll use Sankey Chart to visualize the tabular data below.
| Income | Budget | Expense Mean | Spent On | Spending |
| Simon | Budget | Budget Expenses | Auto Charity | 100 |
| Simon | Budget | Budget Expenses | Mortgages on 2 Houses | 2,250 |
| Simon | Budget | Budget Expenses | Dining Out and Groceries | 1,358 |
| Simon | Budget | Budget Expenses | Property Taxes 2 Houses | 1,010 |
| Simon | Budget | Budget Expenses | Utilities & House Cleaning | 952 |
| His Wife | Budget | Budget Expenses | Parking and Car Expenses | 689 |
| His Wife | Budget | Budget Expenses | Life Ins and Child Care | 491 |
| His Wife | Budget | Budget Expenses | Insurance Life and House | 304 |
| His Wife | Budget | Account | Leftover | 3,800 |
| His Wife | Budget | Saving and Retirement | Dividend Reinvestment | 500 |
| Passive | Budget | Saving and Retirement | Automatic Cash Savings | 1,900 |
| Passive | Budget | Saving and Retirement | Retirement | 1,911 |
| Passive | Budget | Saving and Retirement | HSA | 360 |
| Passive | Budget | Saving and Retirement | Deferred Compensation | 300 |
| Passive | Budget | Saving and Retirement | I-Bond | 100 |
In this example, we’ll use the Sentiment Trend Chart (which belongs to the Sentiment Trend Chart category) to visualize the data set below.
So here we go.
| Month | Positive Count | Negative Count |
| Jan | 3000 | 500 |
| Feb | 4500 | 1200 |
| Mar | 5571 | 1624 |
| Apr | 4059 | 1545 |
| May | 4655 | 1876 |
| Jun | 4366 | 2173 |
| Jul | 4417 | 1698 |
| Aug | 3863 | 1321 |
| Sep | 2600 | 200 |
| Oct | 3300 | 1200 |
| Nov | 4200 | 677 |
| Dec | 4500 | 800 |
You can now select all the columns and rows from the sheets in which data is present and click on Create Chart From Selection.
Check out the final Sentiment Trend Chart as shown below:
What is the purpose of a graph? Continue reading to get in-depth information about the importance of graphs and charts in your data stories.
In this example, we’ll use the Comparison Bar Chart (which belongs to Comparative Analysis Charts Category) to visualize the data set below.
So here we go.
| Year | Store Items | Sales Order |
| 2018 | K2 Southern Style Sauce | 700 |
| 2018 | Turkish Taffy Vanilla | 500 |
| 2018 | Turkish Taffy Strawberry | 380 |
| 2018 | Jimmie Stix | 600 |
| 2018 | Root Beer Barrels Candy | 600 |
| 2018 | Maple Beef Jerky | 400 |
| 2018 | Zachary Mello Crème Candy Corn | 800 |
| 2018 | Goetze’s Caramel Cream | 800 |
| 2018 | Rada Cutlery Popcorn on the cob | 600 |
| 2018 | Burning Asphalt Bourbon Beacon Ketchup | 400 |
| 2018 | Classic Country Gravy Mix | 380 |
| 2018 | Tuttorosso Marinara Pasta Sauce | 800 |
| 2018 | Tuttorosso Marinara Pasta Sauce Tomato | 400 |
| 2018 | Tuttorosso Marinara Traditional Sauce | 700 |
| 2019 | K2 Southern Style Sauce | 370 |
| 2019 | Turkish Taffy Vanilla | 350 |
| 2019 | Turkish Taffy Strawberry | 450 |
| 2019 | Jimmie Stix | 350 |
| 2019 | Root Beer Barrels Candy | 800 |
| 2019 | Maple Beef Jerky | 400 |
| 2019 | Zachary Mello Crème Candy Corn | 650 |
| 2019 | Goetze’s Caramel Cream | 550 |
| 2019 | Rada Cutlery Popcorn on the cob | 700 |
| 2019 | Burning Asphalt Bourbon Beacon Ketchup | 350 |
| 2019 | Classic Country Gravy Mix | 500 |
| 2019 | Tuttorosso Marinara Pasta Sauce | 700 |
| 2019 | Tuttorosso Marinara Pasta Sauce Tomato | 450 |
| 2019 | Tuttorosso Marinara Traditional Sauce | 500 |
| 2020 | K2 Southern Style Sauce | 700 |
| 2020 | Turkish Taffy Vanilla | 370 |
| 2020 | Turkish Taffy Strawberry | 550 |
| 2020 | Jimmie Stix | 380 |
| 2020 | Root Beer Barrels Candy | 360 |
| 2020 | Maple Beef Jerky | 500 |
| 2020 | Zachary Mello Crème Candy Corn | 700 |
| 2020 | Goetze’s Caramel Cream | 600 |
| 2020 | Rada Cutlery Popcorn on the cob | 350 |
| 2020 | Burning Asphalt Bourbon Beacon Ketchup | 450 |
| 2020 | Classic Country Gravy Mix | 600 |
| 2020 | Tuttorosso Marinara Pasta Sauce | 600 |
| 2020 | Tuttorosso Marinara Pasta Sauce Tomato | 500 |
| 2020 | Tuttorosso Marinara Traditional Sauce | 360 |
You can select the data in the sheet and click on Create Chart From Selection.
In this example, we’ll use the 5-point Likert Chart (which belongs to Specialized Survey Charts Category) to visualize the data set below.
1 = Strongly Disagree
2 = Disagree
3 = Neutral
4 = Agree
5 = Strongly Agree
| Questions | Scale | Responses |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff’s behavior? | 1 | 35 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff’s behavior? | 2 | 100 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff’s behavior? | 3 | 146 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff’s behavior? | 4 | 45 |
| How do you rate our cleaning staff’s behavior? | 5 | 193 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 1 | 180 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 2 | 204 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 3 | 129 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 4 | 193 |
| How do you rate our cleaning services? | 5 | 134 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 1 | 150 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 2 | 5 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 3 | 105 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 4 | 3 |
| Will you recommend our services in your circle? | 5 | 253 |
You can now select the data in the sheet and click on Create Chart From Selection.
You can have the final look as shown below by changing some properties of the charts.
What is the purpose of a graph? Continue reading to get in-depth information about the importance of graphs and charts in your data stories.
In this example, we’ll use the Grouped Bar Chart (which belongs to General Analysis Charts Category) to visualize the data set below.
| Brand | California | New York | Chicago |
| Adidas | 4,500 | 3,500 | 3,000 |
| Nike | 3,000 | 2,000 | 4,000 |
| Tesco | 3,500 | 2,500 | 3,000 |
| lucky brand | 2,000 | 3,500 | 2,500 |
| Calvin Klein | 3,000 | 2,000 | 3,500 |
| DIESEL | 2,000 | 3,000 | 3,500 |
| DOCKERS | 3,000 | 2,500 | 2,000 |
| George | 2,500 | 3,000 | 3,500 |
| SANMAR | 3,000 | 2,500 | 3,500 |
You can select the data from the sheet and click on Create Chart From Selection.
In this example, we’ll use the Pareto Bar Chart (which belongs to the Pay-per-click Charts category) to visualize the data set below.
| City | Current Period Sales | Previous Period Sales |
| New York | 610 | 650 |
| Chicago | 550 | 545 |
| San Francisco | 445 | 389 |
| Los Angeles | 572 | 533 |
| Seattle | 153 | 185 |
| Boston | 188 | 143 |
| Phoenix | 497 | 485 |
| Atlanta | 265 | 180 |
| Philadelphia | 489 | 460 |
| Miami | 487 | 367 |
| Dallas | 8 | 6 |
| Houston | 7 | 4 |
| St Louis | 7 | 4 |
| Columbus | 1 | 1 |
| Fresno | 6 | 3 |
| Mesa | 2 | 2 |
| Oakland | 3 | 1 |
| San Antonio | 1 | 2 |
| San Diego | 1 | 1 |
Select the data and click on Create Chart From Selection.
You will have a final look as shown below.
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Miami cities accounts for 80% of the aggregate sales values in the USA.
What is the purpose of a graph? The aforementioned question is what the blog has just addressed.
Data visualization can help you to tell stories by transforming data into a form that’s easier to understand. A good visualization strategy should enable you to tell a story compellingly.
It acts as the bridge between raw data and insights by displaying relationships and trends in your data.
The purpose of a graph is to separate key insights from noise in your data using abstract images.
Our brains can interpret visual content over 60,000 times faster than texts and numbers. By using charts and graphs in your data story, you can easily influence the decisions of your target audiences (or readers).
What is the purpose of a graph?
The key purpose of charts and graphs is to appeal to the emotions of the target audience. Like we said, our brains have a knack for interpreting visual information faster than words and numbers.
If you’re a business person or professional, chances are you already know the importance of graphs and charts. But do you leverage them fully to get the most from your data?
What tools are you using to extract insights into your data?
If your use Excel full-time, you’re really missing big. The spreadsheet application has basic charts, which require more time and effort to customize. Essentially, you cannot find ready-made graphs and charts in the spreadsheet application.
To harness your raw data 100%, download and install add-ins in your Excel.
One of the proven and tested data visualization add-in for Excel is ChartExpo.
ChartExpo with over 50 graphs ready-made and visually appealing charts to get you started in data storytelling. It’s trusted by thousands of professionals and business owners worldwide.
Besides, it has a super-friendly user interface (UI), which means you don’t need coding or programming skills to visualize your data.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to harness your raw data fully for actionable answers.
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