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Sheets tip 251: Use heatmaps to show trends in your data
Hi Reader,
Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #251, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!
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➜ Google Sheets Tip #251: Create heatmaps from your data with conditional formatting
Heatmaps are a great way to add context to your data.
Consider this dataset of monthly average temperatures in the ten largest cities in the U.S.:
It's not easy to see, at a glance, what the trends are between the different cities. It takes effort on our part to read and compare each number, and there's a risk that we miss something.
Compare this to the same table with a heatmap added:
Heatmaps will bring attention to the high and low values in your data, those outliers that demand more attention in your analysis, and they're very easy to create.
Simply highlight the range of data and go to:
Format > Conditional Formatting
Select the Color scale option. Then choose one of the prebuilt color scales or create your own:
You can immediately see the difference.
It's now very easy to identify the temperature trends across the cities, and identify the colder/warmer cities.
Learn more about heatmaps in this tutorial.
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Have a great week!
Cheers,
Ben
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