Sparklines

Miniature within-cell line charts or column charts.

Sparklines–miniature within-cell bar charts available in Excel 2010 and higher–are one of my favorite features of Excel.

I use sparklines to:

  • explore the patterns in my dataset;
  • see the highs and lows in my table;
  • think about what kinds of additional analyses I might want to conduct; and to
  • get ideas for more formal charts that could be shared with my colleagues or clients in a report or presentation.

Examples