PTS Blog

Oh no, not another article about Dynamic Charts! There must be dozens of articles on the interweb about dynamic charts, some of them even useful. I didn’t even write the first Dynamic Charts article on my web site; that honor goes to Debra Dalgleish’s Dynamic Column Chart. Debra enjoyed writing that tutorial so much, she [...]

Introduction to Control Charts
While employed as a scientist/engineer for a large manufacturing corporation, I pulled a stint as trainer for my company’s Total Quality program. This role occupied half of my time for three or four years. A large component of our Total Quality initiative was related to Statistical Process Control (SPC). And of all [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

No time for a full post today (busy busy!), but I wanted to point you to a well written article by my colleague and fellow Excel MVP Charley Kyd of ExcelUser.com, who explains how to Create Cycle Plots in Excel to Chart Seasonal Sales Data.
If you simply plot date-related data, you may notice cyclical patterns, but [...]

I am often asked how to sort the data in a table without sorting the original data. The answer is twofold: the chart’s source data has to be sorted for the charted data to be sorted, but you don’t have to sort the original data if you can write a few formulas. The trick is [...]