Education STEM Work

Creating a GEO learning app in Excel and PowerBI (part2/2)

This is a two-part blog series. To follow along, see part 1 followed by part 2 (this).

If you haven’t see a quick animation of the interface, it’s available in part 1.

Previously, I demonstrated how to get the dataset ready and create some basic charts in Excel about the states of USA. Now, we will enhance the visualizations based on the same dataset and then make this a fully responsive web application available on the Internet, for anyone, on any device.

The next step is to get the data from Excel into PowerBI so that we can leverage its visualizations, cross-platform support and Cloud services.

The PowerBI application

The bottom of the browser shows 1 of 6 and navigation left and right buttons to move through the visualizations.

Let’s coverĀ  the first visualization’s (page 1) interactivity basics…

On any visualization, click on + or – icons at top-right of the screen to zoom in/out. You can also use touch/pinch and mouse-wheel.

Hovering over any of the state’s circular marker gives you key information about it.

You can also select any particular state from the list under State drop-down and the map will automatically home in on that particular state. Click it again to unselect it and get back to full map.

The following chart shows the population density of all states + DC: The dotted line shows the average density.

Then we have the areas of each state + DC (in square miles):

 

Here we find the population growth/change in percentage YoY: The dotted line shows the average population change.

 

Now we learn the names of the highest peaks/locations and their elevation in feet:

 

Here we see the median household incomes: The dotted line shows the Mean income.

Now it’s time to give it a spin for real! The application is available here (opens in your browser).

 

This is a two-part blog series. To follow along, see part 1 followed by part 2 (this).

NOTE: For more detailed explanation of this, actual worksheet, formulas used, etc. feel free to contact me directly as I may offer assistance in the topic(s) with help of donation (since I do not do this for a living and my time is extremely limited). Please see Home page for details/link.

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