Last week, we shared a rendition of a Tufte graphic using just a few lines of Nodebox code. As our commenters pointed out, Python is great, but it may not be every business analyst’s carnal desire to learn a programming language just to generate some nifty graphs. I spent some time to push Chris’s Nodebox rendition into a PIL-based Windows tool that can generate the same sort of comparison graph from an Excel file on the fly.
The result is The Comparison Chart Generator 1.0. The installation instructions are relatively simple. Unzip the zip file, and run comparisionchartgenerator.exe.
Alternatively, we have a new excel chart that creates the same effect using only excel functionality. Download the Excel Tufte Line Chart here.
If you are using the Chart Generator, start with some data in an Excel (xls) or Comma Delimited (csv) format. The data for this graph has to be contained within the first sheet starting with cell A1, as in the following picture.
Select an input file. There are a couple example files bundled with the download.
After selecting a file, you’ll be prompted to modify a few of the basic options available for the chart.
Finally, save the result as a jpeg.
Here is the same image found in Tufte’s textbook processed using the Comparison Chart Generator. It is generated using the csv example file bundled with the download.
Those of us who have undergone lasik eye-improvement surgery may still prefer the sharp crisp Nodebox results, but for the rest of us, this image looks pretty good. Let us know if this tool is useful. If there is enough of a positive response, we may consider expanding functionality for other fancy Tufte-esque charts.
If you do prefer Nodebox, I have an updated script here. This pushes the script up to 20 lines of code or so, but the extra 9 lines allow the labels to push themselves apart on their own. If you want to look at the source code for the Windows program, you can get it here. I used py2exe to compile it into an executable. The code, however, has not been thoroughly commented or cleaned as of yet, so edit it at your own risk.