Bubble charts can be a great way to get a 3D perspective in a 2D chart.
The exercise and result are in the Bubble Chart file.
Here is some hypothetical job search data.
Let's chart the activity and see how the number of interviews and job offers correlate with weeks in search before landing.
Highlight the data (not the candidate column since this is like a scatter chart where we plot the data only) and select bubble charts from the chart wizard. Use the Press button to preview the options (two for bubble charts- one has a little more of a 3D effect).
Click next, then go to the Series tab.
There are a couple things that need to be fixed from what Excel automatically selects:
Click cell D1 when you have the cursor in the Name box to establish the name for the bubbles
Change the X values, Y values and the Sizes to start with the second row, not the first
in the next step, add in the titles
Finish the chart- here is the first pass:
Two more changes- fix the scaling on the axis- to do that, right click on any number in the axis and select Format Axis
Click on Scale tab and change the minimum value to 0. You could also change the maximum value to 50.
The second change is to show the values of the bubbles. Right click on any bubble and select Format Data Series.
The select the Data Labels tab. For a bubble chart, you see different options than other charts. Select bubble to show the bubble values.
Now we have a good looking chart that shows that some people were more effective than others at generating interviews or converting them to job offers.
We saw how scatter charts can be a powerful way of charting values against one another to see correlations in data. With bubble charts, you can take it to a 3D level and add in a third variable.