Friday, January 25. 2008Make Better Charts On-the-Fly
Finally, something to be excited about. One of the essential requirements in any analysts job is to create charts. However, I find manipulating Excel charts a bit too tedious (most options are hidden inside too many menus). Here's a simple solution: Google Charts API. All you need to do is create an image url that includes the chart options and your data, paste it into the address bar of your browser, and your chart is ready. This means that you can embed charts that are created on the fly directly into a webpage/document/presentation. Here are some examples of the charts that you can generate and the corresponding URLs in green(note that these are not static images, they are created along with this webpage):
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart? chs=170x100&cht=p3&chtt=Sample Chart&chd=s:CDDEFH,Wps679& chdl=sales|visits&chxl=0:|jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|&chxt=x http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=180x100& cht=bhs&chtt=Sample%20Chart&chd=s:CDDEFH,Wps679& chco=ff0000,0000ff&chdl=sales|visits& chxl=0:|jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|&chxt=x http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=v& chs=150x100&chd=t:100,80,60,30,30,30,10&chtt=Sample Chart Of course, numerous tools for creating charts using this API have already sprung up. Amongst the official list, I found the Visual Google Chart URL Generator to be the most intuitive (though it does not support Venn diagrams). Another good interface is provided by the Online Chart Builder. You can plot basic mathematical functions using Plot Function Google. For the security junkies, the FAQ states all data used for generating the chart is purged within two weeks. The icing on the cake: The default color pallette is pleasing to the eyes. So you can worry about getting the data right and leaving the aesthetics to the API. Another freeware solution to creating charts on the fly is JFreeChart, an open-source Java based library. A good paid and very flexible alternative I have used is Tableau (thanks to Pratik for pointing that out). Is it time to say goodbye to Excel charts? What do you think - leave a comment. Trackbacks
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... almost about time to say Goodbye to (almost) all the Microsoft products. I know it's easier said than done, but then when I was thinking about the "(almost)" i wrote here, I realized that for every Microsoft product, there exists an alternative and high chances that it is better than the Microsoft solution :|
Man, seriously. Need a better solution that excel. I will check out the solutions you posted. I found a non-freeware aka commercial software to be pretty good at pivot tables + charts known as tableau.
Thanks for reminding me Pratik. I have actually used Tableau and found it very powerful and flexible. In my opinion, it is good value for money. Unfortunately, it is very tough to convince management to invest in a product that only makes charts look good, and nothing else. Still, I think a professional option beats spending hours on a generic software customizing charts.
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