In Custom Axis, Y = 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 I showed axes with base 2 logarithmic scales in both Excel 2003 and 2007. In Excel 2003 it is necessary to transform the data to get the intended result. In Excel 2007, the axis can be achieved with the untransformed data.
In the previous post, the data [...]

One of the best usability features in Microsoft Windows is the context menu, also known as the right-click menu. That’s the menu that pops up under the cursor when you right click the mouse, and it shows what actions are available for the object you’ve right-clicked on. It’s a great shortcut to these actions, and [...]

I’ve had an unintentional holiday from posting, partly due to overloading with client work, and partly due to continued fixing up of my New Computer. It’s usually fun and exciting to get a new computer, but when you have to do most of the setup without access to your old computer, it takes much longer [...]

It finally happened. The laptop I’ve relied on so heavily for the past few years has given up the ghost. For the past couple weeks, it has occasionally shut down. It seemed like a thermal control issue, and propping the machine up on blocks to let air circulate underneath helped, for a while. But Wednesday [...]

Web Meetings
I had a web meeting with a couple of my clients this week. Normally I use GoToMeeting for this purpose, but the client set it up, and we used WebEx. When I selected a service a few years back, I rejected WebEx in favor of GoToMeeting, because I thought GoToMeeting had the nicest, smoothest, [...]

The Chart Doctor Fiasco
I guess Chandoo and I touched off a major tempest in a teapot with our joint announcement last week of our New Feature: The Chart Doctor. Without realizing it, we had used the name of a similar feature on another blog.
As Kelly O’Day of ProcessTrends.com wrote in The Original Chart Doctor:

Mike’s New Blog

Mike Alexander has decided to start his own blog. It’s called Bacon Bits, which fits into the whole Data Pig Technologies theme.Mike promises to add significant new posts every day, and as he says “Don’t worry, it will be great…you’ll love it.”
Mike’s a fellow Microsoft Excel MVP, and the two of us run [...]

I have three new books, which I’ll be reading and reviewing here. Here are the books with very brief first impressions.

How Many MIT Researchers Does It Take To Screw Up a Visual?
I have no punch line, because this left me speechless. Going way too far in support of a bad metaphor. Wouldn’t some kind of probability plot or histogram have been easier to read? Like this quick sketch by krees.

Speaking of MIT, sort of

Greenhouse Gas Spinning Wheels
In Spinning multi-color, Kaiser of JunkCharts brings to our attention a worthwhile study of greenhouse gases, and a decidedly not worthwhile visualization of the same. It’s very colorful, but not easy to interpret. In fact, the colors are distracting, and it takes some poring over the graphic to realize that the smaller [...]