Data visualization has always been an integral part of making informative, engaging spreadsheets. While bars and pies can get the point across, you need something special to spice things up in your spreadsheet when you have a data set that spans across years or months. This is exactly what Zoho Sheet’s new Race Charts can do for you.
What are Race Charts?
Race Charts are animated bar charts, the bars of which represent the data set at a given instant of time. The whole time series data is played as a video depicting how the stakeholders’ progresses are changing over time and ranking them at each instant. In other words, the bars race against each other, and hence the name, Race Charts.
For instance, we took a data set with the points tally of the international tennis rankings for men, singles, for over 10 years. Looking at this ridiculously sparse and vast data set can hardly take you anywhere in understanding the performances of these men and in comparing them year after year. So, we decided to plot the data points in a Race Chart.
As opposed to the traditional, static bar graphs that just give away the final standings of the top players at the end of one week, Race Charts give you the whole story week after week, for over 10 years. In one single chart!
What all can I do with a Race Chart?
Apart from allowing you to visualize a time-series data, Race Charts provide a few more perks.
Let’s look at a few examples from our previous use case. You can:
- Choose to have either the top five, or the top ten players and have their points plotted as bars in the Race Chart.
- “Pause” the chart —meaning, you practically have a chart for each data entry—and you can compare the standings of the top players at any given time.
- Customize the speed at which the chart animates.
- Fully customize labels, legends, and scales, allowing you to tell a story, rather visualize data.
- Publish, or embed the chart on to your web page, blog or reports.
How do I make a Race Chart?
Just like you make every other chart in Zoho Sheet! Select your data range (we can even auto-detect continuous ranges 😉 ), click on the Chart icon in the Quick Access Toolbar, navigate to the Bar Charts tab, and choose Race Charts! There, your Race Chart is done.
You can also customize the chart’s aesthetic and functional elements, right from the side pane. Try Sheet’s all new Race Charts, and share your charts on Twitter with the hashtag #ZohoRaceCharts!
Click here to know more about the Race Charts in Zoho Sheet. Have any questions or feedback? Send us an email at support@zohosheet.com or leave us a comment below.
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