Comments on: US Employment Slump Chart

By: Amerikaans bedrijfsleven sluit 2009 goed af « Grafiekadvies Blog

Amerikaans bedrijfsleven sluit 2009 goed af « Grafiekadvies Blog — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:06:12 +0000

[...] nog enkele aanpassingen (o.a. gebruikmakend van panel column chart, zie bv http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/us-employment-slump-chart/) plus een titel en gridlines is dit het [...]

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:50:21 +0000

Derek – So much of Excel charting consists of quick fixes, doesn’t it?

Speaking of quick fixes, if you want ticks without the axis line, run a dummy XY series up the axis, hide the points and apply short horizontal error bars.

By: derek

derek — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:19:55 +0000

Thanks for adding a zero llne to the scatter graph: my grasp of the original one was held up for a second or two wondering what the significance of the orange and green symbols meant, besides a match to the bar chart. The line makes it obvious.

One of my many peeves about Excel axes is that you can have lines without ticks but not ticks without lines, and you can put the labels far from the axis, but the ticks stay with the axis, not with the labels. But did you know you can put a white line on top of the axis line to blank it out? Not as powerful as the arbitrary axis range technique, but useful as a quick fix.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:42:39 +0000

John – Thanks for the suggestion. I thought of that after I’d posted the article. Your suggestion helped me to overcome my natural laziness.

Bob – A follow-up post is on the way with the procedure. You also helped with my motivation.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:25:13 +0000

Will you be showing how you were able to produce the horizontal bar charts with the offset layout?

I have an idea how you did it, mostly from reading your blog daily, but am interested in the method.

This type of graphical layout could have uses in project management.

By: John Dawson

John Dawson — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:52:28 +0000

Nice work – certainly a VAST improvement on a really awful first chart. Could I suggest that one improvement would be to have the X axis intersect the Y axis at 0 and not the lowest value?