Somnath's Excel Charts

Replicating a newspaper chart is always a lot of fun, and it was to be no different with this one. The  Sep 8, 2011 article  in Guardian includes a  choropleth map to display US unemployment percentage by state. While  data  is available for every month between November '08 - July '11, the Guardian drop-down box only allows us to pick four months out of 33! Choropleth maps are thematic maps in which areas are shaded or patterned in which shows the measurement of the statistical variable being displayed on the map, such as population density or per-capita income, and post-Excel 2002, is mighty hard to create in Excel. I've saved a  Jorge Camoes tutorial  for years on how to make one, and now, in my last week of recuperation, I've finally had the time and the patience to attempt and complete one. The finished map and table looks as below. Moving the scroll bar changes the colours for the states.  The table to the rig...

I came across  this data-set  while reading about different visualization challenges in  Visualization.org . An intriguing table where 194 countries are ranked and rated in diverse parameters to reveal the best place to live. Strangely, there is no data for Sweden under the heading Cost of Living. Certainly, the data was either left out or not available for some obscure reason. It just seems to defy the belief that Sweden will score a "duck" in that category. That none of the Scandinavian countries made it to the top list is yet another surprise for me. Overall, the "Top 10" places to live, in descending order, are: France, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, Luxembourg, USA, Belgium, Canada and Italy. Another idle afternoon spent in sweet excel company to create the following. Some parting words, The scroll-bar and spin-button controls are active-X control elements, not form control elements. Given the inabil...