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Miming A Chart

Unbeknownst to many, the BBC News business page is home to some interesting data-sets and wonderful infographics. So, when I came across the piece titled, "Eurozone debt web: Who owes what to whom?" which revealed, with the help of an interactive chart, what the countries owed each other, I knew I had to dabble with the data.

Replicating that specific chart is close to impossible in Excel. But then, it got me thinking. do we really need a chart to visualize this data? Recognizing the boost conditional formatting received in Office 2007 and 2010 versions, I decided to use its power to mime a chart, rather than create one.

I gathered the needed data from the information displayed in the chart itself to draft the table for the amounts the countries owed each other. And very shortly, within ten minutes, had my "mimed" chart ready.





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