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This page briefly illustrates GraphSheet features using a customer information
database . The data in this example are taken from one of our state residential
utility customer databases. This database may be downloaded by selecting
the download link at the bottom of this page.
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The spreadsheet on the right shows data on housing type, square feet, bedrooms,
income and other characteristics for a sample of households. Extracting
information from this table and exploring relationships in the data with
traditional spreadsheet and database software is cumbersome, requiring a
series of sequential steps including sorting, charting and table development.
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With GraphSheet, users simply block the data of interest as shown above,
and select the spreadsheet Edit/Copy option, open Graphsheet, select the
GraphSheet Edit/Paste menu option and an initial chart immediately appears
in a new GraphSheet window displaying two of the database variables in a
bar or scatter plot.
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In this example GraphSheet selects number of households and dwelling unit
type (typehm) for the initial chart. GraphSheet scans and processes the input
data, distinguishing between categorical variables (which have a limited
number of values or categories) and continuous variables like dwelling unit
square feet.This chart shows that of the 1,350 households in our sample data,
nearly 1,000 reside in single family (sfam) dwelling units.
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Any of the other variables can be selected for chart display using GraphSheet's
variable pull-down list. The chart below shows the results of selecting percent
of households with PC's (pctcom)) for the Y-axis and income for the X-axis.
This information might be useful in developing a marketing program to provide
new utility products to customers through the Internet.
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We can focus on the higher-income customers in the right-most three income
bars by first clicking on the individual bars and then double-clicking on
any of the bars to zoom in on these income categories.
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The figure to the right shows the chart after zooming-in. PC ownership varies
from 37% to 61% across the three income categories.
Note that the chart identifies parameters of the current data subset (62k,87k,
99k income categories).
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To target single-family homeowners, we select type of home (typehm) as the
new X-axis variable generating the chart on the right. Clicking on the sfam
(single family) bar queries the database and locates all single family records
in the current data subset.
Double-clicking on the sfam bar drills down to focus analysis only on households
in the three income categories and households who live in single-family
homes.
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We have reached our target market of high-income, single family households.
Developing a marketing program for this market will require additional
information on these customers.
Selecting the household head variable for the X-axis shows that nearly all
of these households have two parents in the home.
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Selecting the at home variable shows that fewer than half of these households
have someone home during the day.
Other household characteristics can be examined by selecting the variables
from a pull-down list.
The target market can also be segmented further by drilling down on any new
segmentation variable.
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GraphSheet has many other features that facilitate data exploration. Each
time a bar was clicked in the example above, an entry was made in a separate
Statistics Window and in a Query Tree Window. The Statistics Window entries
return information on database queries and correlate to chart areas with
color codes. Similarly, each query operation results in the addition of a
color-coded node to the query tree, visually describing the user-defined
hierarchical data subset development. Clicking on the query tree node moves
the analysis back to that position in the analysis.
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The example above displays only bar charts because one of the variables is
always a categorical variable (a variable that can have a limited number
of values such as dwelling unit type) . GraphSheet provides similar query,
drill-down and navigation with charts of two continuous variables. If two
continuous variables are selected, the data are automatically presented as
a scatter chart. Data subsets are selected in scatter charts with mouse
click-and-drags along the X-axis.
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Here, three home-size categories have been selected within the subset of
single family homes. As each subset is selected, chart areas change color
and entries are added dynamically to the statistics window. The drill-down
feature can be used on any of the colored chart areas. For instance,
double-clicking on the blue area drills down to focus on households with
single family dwelling units which range in size from 2100 square feet to
3700 square feet.
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GraphSheet works with spreadsheets, databases, word processing software,
text lists, Web downloadable data and more and with any kind of data - sales,
revenue, costs, production, customer contact, accounting, survey and many
more. With "weighted" survey data, a special feature automatically weights
survey data to show population results in the charts and statistics windows.
These few slides illustrate how GraphSheet users can:
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select any combination of variables for chart display,
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select any subset of displayed data,
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drill down to any data subset and,
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freely navigate through the data.
Most importantly, no setup is
required to take advantage of GraphSheet capabilities
- Block the Data and copy it to the clipboard, open GraphSheet and paste
the data then GraphSheet does the rest.
Download Customer Information Database
The customer information database may be downloaded as a csv (comma-delimited
text) file ( click on the download link below and select the File/Save as
menu option).
To access the data with GraphSheet read the downloaded csv file into a
spreadsheet program (Excel, Lotus 123 or Quatro Pro), click-and-drag across
the entire data table including the labels at the top of the table, select
the spreadsheet Edit/Copy menu command, open GraphSheet and select the Graphsheet
Edit/Paste command and the GraphSheet session immediately begins.
 Download Customer Information
Database.
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