This makeover shows how using bar charts beside each other makes it easier to compare multiple characteristics of the same items or areas. (this is a silent video and you can pause it to spend more time on any of the slides)
Author: Dave Paradi
Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don't overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.
FinancialViz Makeover: Comparing multiple characteristics; Issue #435 March 19 2019
The latest FinancialViz makeover video I posted illustrates a situation we can often find ourselves in. We are comparing items to each other and we want to show multiple characteristics of the items to make our point. In this example from the November 2018 issue of the Globe and Mail Report on Business magazine, the…
Matching Excel charts to a PowerPoint color scheme; Issue #434 March 5 2019
If you create a graph in Excel, how do you get the colors to match the organization’s PowerPoint template? The two most common approaches are: 1) spend time typing in the RGB values for the correct colors into Excel for every graph, or 2) ignore the desire to make the colors match because of the…
Showing future differences; Issue #433 February 19 2019
When we want to show the impact of a proposed change, one of the ways we can do it is to show a line graph of the current state and the proposed state with a shaded area between the two to emphasize the difference. This is much better than the default table of values that…
Presenting the Balance Sheet: Visually show Assets (or Liabilities) with YoY change
Today you will learn a great visual to use when presenting Assets or Liabilities from the Balance Sheet. Too often Balance Sheet presentations to executives or the Board are filled with spreadsheets. In my surveys of audiences they tell me that large tables of numbers are confusing and overwhelming. Our audiences want meaningful visuals instead…
Comparing only one value to a standard; Issue #432 February 5 2019
When you want to compare values to a standard, such as comparing output in various production plants to the goal, a dashed line on a column graph is a good visual to use. The dashed line runs across the graph and it is easy to see if each column is above or below the goal.…
Half-day session for Beverage company (February 6, 2020, Mississauga, ON)
Customized half-day session for professionals and management covering planning a presentation, focusing the message, and creating effective visuals. The session includes slide makeovers of their own slides to reinforce the ideas.
Half-day session for MBA students (January 29, 2020, Kingston, ON)
Customized half-day workshops for students of the Queen’s Smith School MBA program covering planning a presentation, focusing the message, and creating effective visuals. The session includes many real-life examples to reinforce the ideas.
Showing difference with diverging bars; Issue #431 January 22 2019
To see how well we are doing in the current year, we compare this year’s results to last year’s results and to the budget we set at the start of the year. Too often presenters show a spreadsheet of the numbers and expect the audience to figure out the result. My latest slide makeover video…
Presenting financial analysis: Show trends in data series measured in different units
You’ve analyzed the past data and need to communicate important findings to the executives or Board. If you want to show how the trends in different measurements compare to each other even though they are measured in different units, this video shows how to use an index line graph to allow the viewers to quickly…