PTS Blog

Statistical Process Control (SPC) is a set of statistical and related methods for monitoring processes with an aim to improve productivity and reduce costs, time, and waste incurred by these processes. In fact, SPC is a philosophy surrounding the monitoring, analysis, and adjustment of process variables to produce continuous improvements in the process.
There are a [...]

Excel is a mighty powerful application, and yet, there are any number of utilities available to extend its capabilities. I’m sure everyone has their favorites, and here I’m going to talk about mine. My reliance on these utilities is as a developer of Excel applications, that is, solutions that combine add-ins, templates, and regular workbook [...]

In Using Pivot Table Data for a Chart with a Dual Category Axis, I showed how to make a Chart with a Dual Category Axis using a pivot table to properly arrange the source data. I generally prefer using a regular chart, because pivot charts are pretty inflexible when it comes to formatting. Unfortunately, a [...]

In Using Pivot Table Data for a Chart with a Dual Category Axis, I showed how to make a Chart with a Dual Category Axis using a pivot table to properly arrange the source data. I generally prefer using a regular chart, because pivot charts are pretty inflexible when it comes to formatting. Unfortunately, a [...]

Tony commented on the previous post, Chart with a Dual Category Axis, asking whether I’d use a pareto chart for this data. I commented that it almost was a pareto chart, since at least within each category the data is sorted from high to low. Then I got to thinking, if I put my data [...]

Through appropriate arrangement of your source data, you can give your chart a dual category axis. This approach works with chart types that have an “Category” type category (X) axis, that is. line charts, column charts, and bar charts. The chart below shows defect rates in several different components, which are grouped into a smaller [...]

One of my favorite comics is xkcd, “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” It has an off-center, geeky feel. My daughter likes it too, and showed me this and a dozen other comics today.

Attentive readers might recognize this as a horizontally aligned Pareto Chart.
from http://xkcd.com/369/

Office 2007 has been out now for well over a year, and I’ve been using it in some capacity since before the beta kicked off over a year before its commercial release. Lately I’ve gotten more and more jobs for Excel 2007 as companies upgrade and users buy new computers with Excel 2007 pre-installed. I’ve [...]

A candlestick chart is used to show stock price performance, typically daily; a bar shows the daily change from the opening to closing price, with different colors for gaining and losing changes, and lines extend from the bar to the daily high and low.

I was recently asked how to apply different arbitrary colors to individual [...]

I was directed to the web site for UberBI after reading The Uber Art of Dashboards on the Dashboards by Example blog. I want to say a few words about this chart, a stacked pyramid, which is featured prominently on one of UberBI’s displays.

Stacked Pyramid Chart
I occasionally read the Dashboards by Example blog, although I [...]

BonaVista Systems, the maker of MicroCharts 3 sparkline* software for Microsoft Excel and for Microsoft Analysis Services, has announced an Excel Dashboard Competition. The competition is for the best real-world Excel dashboard: supply your own data (suitably obfuscated, of course) and generate a dashboard using only Excel and MicroCharts 3.
*Sparklines are small (word-sized) but information-dense [...]

Dynamic ranges (or “Names”) are commonly used to identify a range of the appropriate length, so that a chart will plot the right number of points. For example, you may want to plot year to date sales, without blanks for the months which are still in the future. The dynamic range uses COUNT or similar [...]