If you've followed the steps in the book chapter carefully, you should have a pretty good idea how to manage key concepts of spreadsheet application use like conditional formatting, "What if?" scenarios, and filtering. But as we saw in Lab 13, there's more to data than manipulating it in its tabular form.
Taking a cue from the ManyEyes visualizations, you'll return and download one of the datasets for the Titanic. You'll import that into a spreadsheet application, and try out some of that application's native visualization abilities.
In this fourteenth lab, you'll continue the hands-on work with spreadsheet applications you started in Lab 13. As you explore, review your answers from the To consider: section above. Have you changed your mind about any of them?
Next, import the .txt file (or drag and drop it) into your spreadsheet application. You should see a table 9 columns wide. Here's one example:
Try IT: Making chart
Even with this relatively small dataset, some interesting questions can be answered,
and the answers shown in chart form. Try answering the following:
Let's walk through this one together, assuming you are using Excel:
=COUNT(
in the formula bar, then select the range of cells to count. You can begin with A2
and select everything in that column that has an entry. When your selection is complete,
type the closing )
and press Enter. This will give
you a count of the number of rows, which in this dataset represent passengers.=IFERROR(IF(MATCH("female",C2,0),1,0),0)
.
This formula says, if the value in column C is "female", put a 1
in this column. If the cell value is anything else, put a zero. Use the fill handle
to use the same formula all the way down to the last entry in the dataset. You may want to
sort by column C to make sure the formula is working correctly.Choose a chart that will help you tell the story you want. With these two numbers, the percentages are parts of a whole, so a pie chart should work, but feel free to try other options. Select the cells you want to turn into a chart, then select the chart type from the Insert menu. If you chose a pie chart, you should end up with something like this:
How did you do? Ready to try the other ones? Remember to keep in mind which chart might work best for the data you are presenting.
Working with charts is just one kind of information visualization. Some information can be delivered in timeline form, like Timeline, one of MIT's SIMILE project widgets. The SIMILE widgets are a set of free, open-source data visualization applications.
For more personal information visualization, consider mind mapping, a technique for note-taking, brainstorming, and generally getting ideas down. This very visual approach can be done with pen and paper, or with a free online application like draw.io.