Bullet visuals are a variation of bar graphs, customized for showing progress towards a predefined goal. They are developed specifically for financial data, but may be used in many other situations. They are an alternative to Gauge Visuals.
Here is an example of a bullet chart for one of the High Schools; it illustrates the various elements of the bullet chart.
Just as other Arcadia Enterprise visuals, the bullet visual may be trellised using X and Y shelves, have additional fields on the Tooltips shelf, and uses Filters. It also includes additional setting adjustments.
This example uses the 2012 and 2013 API Scores for California Schools.
We are working with the dataset School Performance, built on the ca-school-apis.csv datafile that contains the California School APIs from 2012 and 2013. Note that the range of possible scores varies from a low of 200 to a high of 1000. The statewide API performance target for all schools is 800. However, each school that has not achieved that target may have a more realistic score set for it by the Department of Eduction, based on a number of factors we will not discuss here.
Start a new visual based on dataset School Performance.
See Importing Data, Creating Datasets, and Creating Visuals.
In the visuals menu, find and click Bullet (row 2, column 4).
Note that the shelves of the visual changed. They are now X, Y, Measures (mandatory), Compare to, Qualitative Ranges, Projection, Label, Tooltips, and Filters.
Populate the shelves from the available fields (Dimensions, Measures, and so on) in the Data menu.
Measure shelf: add the field Api13
. Change
the aggregation, so that the shelf contains max([Api13])
.
[Optional] Limit the output to the top 10 performers:
10
in the Top
K option.Compare To field: add the field Api12
. Then customize the
expression to reflect whether the school reached the state-wide target of
API=800
.
Max(if([Api12] < 800, [Api12] + [Target], 800))
Qualitative Ranges shelf: add the field
Api12
. Then, specify the equation that returns the upper limit of the
first qualitative range. For this visual, we are using simple scalar values.
600
, and click
Save.In this example, we defined four ranges: at 600
,
700
. 800
, and 1000
.
Projection field: add the field Api13
. Then, specify the
equation that projects the current measurement to some future date.
if( max([Api13]) > 800, max([Api13]), max([Api13]) + 2 * max([Target]))
Label field: add the field Api13
, and convert
the aggregation to maximum, for max([Api13])
.
[Optional] Duplicate the field, and change its definition to
max('API')
, using the Enter/Edit Expression
interface. Move this field above the other field.
Api12
, Target
, Dname
,
Sname
, and so on. We suggest that you apply an
Alias to these fields.Cname
for name of the County (selecting Santa Clara), and
Stype
for school type (choosing H for high school).Sname
(school name) to
trellis the visual.Click Refresh Visual.
The new bullet visual appears. Note that it is trellised, which is why it is sorted on the
Sname
field (school name), not on the measure
Api13
.
Additionally, the Projection value is not visible; this is because it is relatively low for high-performing schools.
Change the order property of the Measure shelf by selecting the
Bottom K option with a value of 10
, and click
Refresh Visual.
Note that in all cases here, the projection value is visible because it is relatively large compared to the projected improvement for schools that already reached the 800 API threshold.
Change the title to High School Performance - Bullet
.
Click (pencil icon) next to the title of the visualization to edit it, and enter the new name.
[Optional] Click (pencil icon) below the title of the visualization to add a brief description of the visual.
At the top left corner of the Visual Designer, click Save.
At the top left corner of the Visual Designer, click Close.
To adjust the bullet visual, check all the available settings for this visual.