Speedometer Graph in Excel

I have seen some speedometers in some of the professional dashboards. I thought how? How do they do it? So I did some preliminary research and came up with this speedometer. Kindly comment for any changes required. 

Step 1: Insert Values

Open a new workbook and enter
Value in cell B2
Max in cell C2
27 in cell B3 (exact value)
100 in cell C3 (maximum value)

Comments

[jraikes]

You could use XLGauge (www.pendragonsystems.com)

[brianmcfadden]

There was also a speedo graph with an attractive customizable background here (www.ExcelDashboardWidgets.com)

[abaker5]

I love this it's so helpful, especially the example.

[knowledgeshare]

Gr8 job art worker.
This will be useful to create dashboards in excel itself.

[kelseymh]

Very nicely done! It's always fun to see some actual mathematics used in Excel (pity you have to do the conversion from degrees to radians by hand, though).

[PKM]

Excel has a built-in function known as RADIANS(angle) where angle is the angle in degrees you wish to convert to radians. For example, the Excel expression used to convert 270° to radians would be RADIANS(270) which equals 4.712389 radians

From here

You can simplify the expressions to

B7: =-COS(RADIANS(((B3*180/C3))))
C7: =SIN(RADIANS(((B3*180/C3))))

[hkabra]

Thanks PKM.

Its really an easy way !!!

[artworker]

Thanks PKM for the simplification. I got the formulae, but did not had the time to update the instructable. Appreciated!

[andrejgano]

thank you, nice guide

[finton]

Wonderful! Now the folks at work can be amazed by "MacroMan"'s graphing abilities as well. We'll keep it our secret right? ; ]
I've had a play around with this today: if one sets things up like in the attached pic, one can enter data (eg scores out of 20) on another sheet and have the graph reflect this. And yeah, there are many and better ways of setting things up, - as I said, just a play around!
Adding the Redline cell easily allows one to change where the red extends to, which might be useful if one has to use this graph for different criteria.
Well done artworker: I'd not have come up with that one on my own, so thanks! Any other graph tricks you can show us? I'd be keen...

[artworker]

Very nicely done! I am fattered, I mean flattered! :P

[Toebak]

This is a very cool method for making data visual in a different way! Cool.

[PKM]

Good work- you'll have me out of a job!  I can't think of a way to improve this graph (simplicity is the key to a good dashboard) but for people who would want to customise theirs further you might want to explain the math you used in step 3 to get the points for the speedometer needle.

For more fun with this you could play with the Data -> From Web tool- it gets the contents of part of a website into your spreadsheet.  If the thing you want your dashboard speedometer to show is available on the web somewhere, you can probably get it this way.

[artworker]

Thanks PKM for the comment. It is a nice idea to have a web query connected to this graph. I will implement this on my share price sheet. As for the formula shown, I am looking for words to explain the same. Will do it ASAP.