Data visualization is a great way to organize and transform a large amount of data into a format that’s easy to read and understand. With so many different chart types to choose from, it’s important to select the right chart to represent your data. When dealing with hierarchical data, a treemap chart is excellent for showing both the structure and relative value of the information. Below we’ll take a closer look at how to create a treemap chart in Excel.
What Is a Treemap?
A treemap is a data visualization technique that displays hierarchical data as a set of nested rectangles. You can search online for “treemap chart example” to get a better idea of how this specific chart type visualizes data. The size of each rectangle corresponds to the value of the data item it represents, and the color indicates the category. The individual rectangles are called “trees” or “nodes”, and the leaves are the data items. Treemaps are used to display a large amount of data in a tree-like structure, similar to the directory structure of a computer file system, or the source code for a software program.
How to Create a Treemap Chart
The process of generating a treemap chart in Excel is similar to that of any other chart type. Start by creating a new spreadsheet. Once the spreadsheet is open, you will need to enter the data that you would like to be displayed in your chart. You can do this by creating a table with two columns: In column A, list the hierarchical levels of your data (e.g., product category, product subcategory, product type). In column B, list the corresponding values for each level (e.g., sales revenue for products in each category).
After you have entered all of the data, you can then begin to generate your chart. To create the treemap chart, you must first select the relevant data. You can do this by clicking and dragging across the cells that contain the data. After you have selected the data, click on Insert > Illustrations > Treemap Chart.
Excel will then generate a treemap based on your data. Its algorithm will automatically determine how best to organize the data into nested rectangles, and the colors of each section will represent how much of that category is shown in your data set. For example, if there is more blue in your data set, then the blue section will be larger than any of the other sections.
Customizing Your Treemap
If your data does not fit neatly into a rectangular grid, you can use the “Customize” tab on the ribbon to adjust the layout of your chart. For example, you can drag and drop columns or rows to change their position in the hierarchy, or resize individual rectangles to emphasize certain values.
The customization tab also makes it easy to change the colors, title, and data labels of your chart. Be sure to title the chart so your audience knows what the treemap represents!
After customizing the treemap chart, clicking on the “ok” button will save your changes and close the window. This will return the user to the Excel window where the chart was created.
The Best Data for Treemaps
Numeric data is the best type of data to use for treemaps. This is because numeric data can be easily sorted and visualized as a hierarchy. Text data can also be used for treemaps, but it is not as easy to visualize as numeric data.
Another important consideration is the size of the data. The size of the data affects the size of the treemap. If the data is too large, the treemap will be too large and will be difficult to read. If the data is too small, the treemap will be too small and will not be very informative.
A treemap chart is a great way to visualize data that is hierarchical in nature. The overall importance of a particular item in the data can be easily seen by looking at the size of the rectangle representing that item.
