Comments on: Marimekko Charts

By: James

James — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:23:01 +0000

Many thanks Jon, I can see I have some more bedtime reading here . . . hope you are well, this is the first blog I have ever had any really useful information from, all best James (Gloucestershire, UK)

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:13:48 +0000

James - Arranging blocks by size (not color) is already pretty complicated to handle with column charts, as I described in Stack Columns In Order Of Size and in Stack Columns In Order Of Size With VBA. In the latter article I also noted that this change makes the chart much more difficult to interpret.

By: James

James — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:12:42 +0000

Hi, is there any way to sort the data such that for each company, their largest share of a market appears at the bottom of the chart, so one company might have laptops closest to the x-axis, another company might have servers – it would mean finding a way to decouple the ‘category data’ so it can be individually moved / prioritised for each company . . . . can this be done in Excel or does it need a package of some sort? All best, James.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:32:56 +0000

Charles -

Presumably you are formatting the series so it has no markers and no lines? And you’ve cleared the cells that have the Y values for the labels? If you don’t clear the cells, but use a formula that returns “”, the “” is text not a blank, so Excel treats it as a zero. To keep the formulas, change “” to NA(), which puts the #N/A error in the cell, but doesn’t plot a point.

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:42:13 +0000

Hey Jon – thanks for this great site.

I’m having issues with the label-lines in the chart; after following the steps, I remove 0%’s from the table but the lines persist. Effectively, for each series I have one labeling point where Y>0, but for all other points (X>0) it’s recording distinct points on the chart with Y=0…any thoughts on how I remove these unwanted points?

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:18:54 +0000

One of the shortcomings of Marimekko charts is that they present a picture of a single point in time. Even if the audience had full color glossy reproductions of several charts, comparisons between them would be difficult to make. This is a hard realization, after so much work, but you should consider other types of charts, or groupings of charts, which effectively show how the various items change with time. For example, line charts (or bar/column charts) with time as the X axis, perhaps in panel chart form. I have some examples in Panel Charts with Different Scales and How to Build a 2x2 Panel Chart.

By: Kalle

Kalle — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:05:05 +0000

I have now created three charts one for the fiscal year 07, 08 and 09. It consist of 6 countries and each country have 5 groups. The changes over the years has not been major so when I will use this in a PP the audience might have a hard time to see the difference over the years.

My question is if you know any good way of showing what the differnce is between the charts other then just adding the numbers?

By: Kalle

Kalle — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:39:57 +0000

Hi Jon,

I tried it now in Excel 2003 and it works fine and it was the Time Scale that I got wrong in the 2007 version but that was somehow easier with older version but now I know were to look.

Thanks for a great blog

Kalle

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:56:29 +0000

Works for me in 2007/SP2. Your description is not sufficiently detailed to tell me where you got stuck.

By: Kalle

Kalle — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:37:58 +0000

That would be great cause I got stuck again doing it step by step.. =/

The problem the “time scale” step, either I have formated wrong or the time scale in the 2007 version does not work!

How is it going with that post?? =)