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; see Shelves for Bullet Visuals. 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 Adding Data, Creating Datasets, and Creating Visuals.
In the visuals menu, find and click Bullet.
Note that the shelves of the visual changed. They are now Measures (mandatory), Compare to, Qualitative Ranges, Projection, Label, Tooltips, X Trellis, Y Trellis, and Filters.
Populate the shelves from the available fields (Dimensions, Measures, and so on) in the Data menu.
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.[Optional] Alias the field as the name of the measurement. In this case, use API.
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))
[Optional] Alias the field as Compare To.
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
.
[Optional] Alias the ranges as Range 1, Range 2, Range 3, and Range 4.
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]))
[Optional] Alias the field as Projection.
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 over the other field.
Add more fields here, such as Api12
,
Target
, Dname
, Sname
, and so on.
We suggest that you apply an Alias to these fields.
Add the field Sname
, and
Alias it as School.
Add the filters here. We used
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) under 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.