So what are my chances mate !

Posted on 09 September 2008

WSJ ran this graph that shows the probability of a person's dying through various causes. Topping the "death chart" are heart disease (1 in 5), cancer (1 in 7), stroke (1 in 24) and motor vehicle accident (1 in 84). The probability that one will die by drowning is 144 times than being killed by flooding. Continue Reading

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Earth without humans

Posted on 09 September 2008

This chart, appearing in an article titled Earth without humans by Alan Weisman shows the time it'll take for nature to reclaim earth if humans vanish from the face of the planet today. Within 50 years, environment makes rapid progress towards recovery, in a 1000 years most man made structures will be gone and CO2 levels would be back to pre-industrial age levels. Nuclear waste however would remain upto ... Continue Reading

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NY Times – Home Foreclosure Graph

Posted on 07 September 2008

This appeared some time back in April-2008. What is interesting to note is that not only this chart is visually appealing but it does pack a lot of data. The color of the stacks shows the % of subprime mortgaes as a % of all mortgages in an area while the height of a stack shows subprimes mortgages foreclosed as a % of all subprime mortgages in that area. If ... Continue Reading

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How to make Visio like flowcharts in excel

Posted on 06 September 2008

I sometimes use connectors and autoshapes in excel to make flowcharts for my projects. A little refined touch and you can have them looking nealy like the ones made in Visio. I say *nearly* because although everything moves, reshapes and resizes properly, the connectors still bend at 90 degrees unlike the ones in Visio which curve smoothly.....but nonetheless a small price to pay especially if you don't have ready access ... Continue Reading

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One off the charts

Posted on 06 September 2008

On a recent trip......... captured a masterpeice....... ... Continue Reading

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Creating tree structure in excel

Posted on 06 September 2008

You can use the group and outline features in excel to create tree structures. On expanding each node the next branch becomes visible. You can download the file here. Continue Reading

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The Internet is an Interesting Place…

Posted on 06 September 2008

....and that's partly what got Barrett Lyon to create this beautiful map the internet by locating each C Class network in it. I think this has great potential. For example and as Lyon mentions on his site, if you get a chance to look at two pictures of a geographical location before and after a disruptive event takes place(like an eartquake or a Tsunami), this can give ... Continue Reading

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Oiling the World Economy

Posted on 06 September 2008

In recent weeks Oil has moved down from $ 140 to $ 108. After reaching record highs, some experts now predict that oil will continue to decline and go back to normal. The trillion dollar question is WILL IT? The price that we pay for oil today certainly seems high, especially when one compares them to what the prices have prevailed for the greater part of this century. Once the oil ... Continue Reading

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5 easy ways to make data validation work for you

Posted on 06 September 2008

One of the easiest ways to add interactivity to your spreadsheets and dashboard is to use the data validation feature in excel. Data validation allows you specify a list of options that you want a cell to display as a drop-down. You may want to download the sample sheet here before we begin. To being creating a dropdown for a particular cell, select the cell and click Data -> Validation. In ... Continue Reading

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The rise and fall of movies – NY Times

Posted on 04 September 2008

Mathew Bloch, Lee Byron, Shan Carter and Amanda Cox at NY Times produced this amazing visual showing the performance of movies at the box office between 1986 and 2008. Though the choice of an stacked area chart does not allow the reader to pick the numbers right off the chart but it certainly does pack a lot of information. Also check out the cool search feature!! The Ebb and Flow of ... Continue Reading

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Storm chase

Posted on 03 September 2008

These beautiful maps on Wikipedia show the paths of all the storms in the past few decades. As you can see, these tropical storms are the most ferocious over the Pacific West. The entire region consisting of Japan, China and South East Asia frequently encounter these storm systems. ... Continue Reading

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God vs. Money, Obama vs. McCain

Posted on 02 September 2008

I don't know if there's any stastical validity to these results, but Google Trends does let you know what people across the globe are seraching for. As of today: Money 1.00 vs. God 0.62 Obama 2.80 vs. McCain 1.00 John McCain 1.00 vs. Barak Obama 0.50 http://www.google.com/trends Continue Reading

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The Jordan effect

Posted on 01 September 2008

tvbythenumbers.com paints the "Jodran Effect". Micheal's dominance of the NBA from 1991 to 1994 sent TV viewerships soaring to new heights. He then tried his hands at baseball and came back in 1996 not only to halt the decline while he was away but take them to yet newer levels. The ratings have never been that high again. (The upper line shows Viewership during NBA finals. The lower line shows viewership ... Continue Reading

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Stack on DIGG

Posted on 01 September 2008

Digg Stack shows diggs occurring in real time on up to 100 stories at once. Diggers fall from above and stack up on popular stories. Brightly colored stories have more Diggs. Continue Reading

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We Feel Fine

Posted on 01 September 2008

"Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). The result is a ... Continue Reading

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Musicovery

Posted on 01 September 2008

Musiccovery.com lets you discover new music based on your mood. A very novel way of changing the tracks based on how you feel. Musicovery.com Continue Reading

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DNA Strand simulation using Excel

Posted on 01 September 2008

Excel can be used to create neat little simulations for classroom traings. I remember a long time back, I had a tough time trying to understand how the strands of a DNA coil around each other. Well....I tired my hands at creating a rotating DNA strand using 3-D bubble charts.....stright 'n simple for the most part......the trick lies in making the base and linking pairs change their overlaps after rotating every ... Continue Reading

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The long march of evolution

Posted on 01 September 2008

Interesting to see how humans travelled from Africa and moved to Asia (75,000 years ago), Europe (50,000 years ago) and Americas (35,000 years ago). Here are the important learnings: 1. Adam and Eve lived in Africa and started eveything 2. The Russians were the first ones to discover America 3. It took man nearly 50,000 years to walk all ... Continue Reading

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Excel Chart Types – Advanced

Posted on 01 September 2008

Here are a few more chart types. These can be used to represent multi-dimentional data. Download the file with advanced excel chart types here. Continue Reading

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