Bar Chart Races

Recently bar chart races have become popular on social media. This form of data visualization has animated data bars which lengthen and change order as the values for tracked items accumulate or diminish over time. Tonight, I was able to easily create my own custom animated bar chart using the Flourish online data visualization site. The below chart tracks the number of victories each baseball franchise has won since 1901.

1. Begin by creating an account on the Flourish site here: https://app.flourish.studio/@flourish/bar-chart-race . You can log in with your Google account.

2. Flourish provides an example bar chart. You'll need to upload your data on the second 'data' tab.

3. Set up your data in Excel and save it to a .csv file. In this example the bar chart is showing how the data changes over time. So the the values are listed in columns from left to right, with one column for each year. The total from one column is added to the next column as the data runs from left to right. Each 'bar' for the tracked items is listed on a separate row.

4. You can link to an image to be used at the end of each bar in one of the columns. Note that linking to images saved on Wikipedia will work if you have an address which indicates the image flie can be uploaded. E.g., https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9d/St._Louis_Cardinals_logo.svg

5. After uploading your .csv file, set on the 'Data' tab the columns which have labels, values or images for your chart. Just enter the correct column letters in the online form.

6. There are different options on the 'Preview' tab to change the appearance of the chart. You can specify the color of each bar in the 'Bar colors' menu's 'Color overrides' section. Enter the name for the bar, followed by a colon and color.

7. In the 'Timeline & animation' menu, you can slow down the animation of the bar chart race by setting how long the chart takes to run from the beginning to the end of the time range, and setting how quickly bars change order.

8. The free version of a Flourish account allows you to link to the chart with a URL. If you want to use the chart in an offline PowerPoint, it may be necessary to get a paid account.

Map Data Visualizations with Power BI

Microsoft has developed business analytics software, Power BI, which can create data visualizations. You can download a trial version here.

The Shape Maps tool can help you compare different regions on a map.

1. Under File > Options and Settings > Options, check off Shape Map Visual.

Power BI will have to restart.

2. When it does, click the Shape Map icon and an template will appear.

3. Click on it and a custom map can be created with TopoJSON map file The Offices of the United States Attorneys posts data for the federal district courts. Microsoft has done litigation support professionals everywhere a favor and posted shape map demo file here based on this data which you can use to explore Power BI capabilities.

4. The maps shows data for each federal judicial district's total collected debt and the number of debts that are cancelled. If you right click on any one judicial district you can create an analysis of the data trend in recent years.