Lightweight data exploration in Excel seems to be a natural fit. But there has been surprisingly little visualization innovation in this tool since the beginning. A three-dimensional pie chart does not effectively convey any more information than a two-dimensional model. Most users of Excel in the Life Sciences appear to use it as a database or simple LIMS system.

There may be room in Excel to split out the data management and the visualization components. Until that happens, Chris Gemignani from Juice Analytics offers some interesting in-line bar charts, in the spirit of Edward Tufte’s Sparklines.

The follow-up article highlights some suggestions by readers of the original article. Two-columns used to show positive and negative values, gradient fills, dot-graphs, anchored dot graphs created by repeating dashes finished with the letter “o”, even in-cell Gantt charts.

For other gems like this, Juice Analytics is a site worth watching.