Alex Jones topped this week’s favorite vizzes with his Roger Federer analysis, demonstrating some cool image bars. Alex then shared his technique here. I thought it was great because as I read through it, I felt that I would approach it differently, so I’ve decided to quickly document my own method to offer another (lazier) approach.
Roger Federer – 100 ATP Tour Title Wins
by Alex Jones
My own approach would be to start with a simple bar chart. Here I’ve just added a simple data set of 1 to 10 and set the columns to be Discrete so that I have nice, wide bars.
Next I invert the bars, for simplicity by subtracting 11 ([Numbers] – 11). I also add column borders and adjust the bars so that the borders are visible to the axis.
Exciting step! I make the bars and column borders white, and I make the worksheet background transparent.
Next I add an image to a dashboard, here I covered up the excess at the bottom with a white text box.
Finally I layer my Inverted White Bar worksheet over the image. You could layer another regular bar chart on top of this one with 100% transparency if you wanted the bars to be selectable.
Again, this is not to diminish Alex’s technique, but to offer an alternative approach that allows you to skip the image editor step.
Best,
Josh