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OCCASIONAL SERIES – TECHNICAL TOOLS

OCCASIONAL SERIES – TECHNICAL TOOLS. PD # 1 - DataThief. Updated April 2007. L.E.K. Consulting Pty Ltd Level 36, Aurora Place 88 Phillip Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia t: 61.2.9323 0700 f: 61.2.9323 0600 lek.com.

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OCCASIONAL SERIES – TECHNICAL TOOLS

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  1. OCCASIONAL SERIES – TECHNICAL TOOLS PD # 1 - DataThief Updated April 2007 L.E.K. Consulting Pty Ltd Level 36, Aurora Place 88 Phillip Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia t: 61.2.9323 0700 f: 61.2.9323 0600 lek.com The materials contained in this document are intended to supplement a discussion between CLIENT NAME and L.E.K. Consulting on DATE. These perspectives are confidential and will only be meaningful to those in attendance.

  2. Reading data off a graph manually ranks highly among the least favored associate tasks. Fortunately, there is a better way… • DataThief is a freeware program which allows you to reverse engineer the data from charts that are in graphical form (JPEG, PDF, on paper etc) • It allows you to speed up the process of extracting data from charts where the underlying data isn’t available in soft copy • This is good. • The program and it’s OEM manual are embedded in this slide. Double click icons to extract and open DataThief Executable File DataThief OEM Manual Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  3. There are a number of ways to use DataThief. This document works through the most simple and practical method… Steps 1 & 2 Save the Graph as a graphic file somewhere easily accessible (bitmap, jpeg, gif, all fine) Step 1 Step 2 Open DataThief, and open the graphic file within it. Things should now look similar to this… Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  4. Steps 3 & 4 Go to Edit-> Preference->Mouse click definitions Ensure things are set like this Step 3 Step 4 The settings menu should look like this Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  5. Note Notice that there are four coloured crosshairs. The three with diagonal intersections are used to define the dimensions of the graph. The blue one is less important in this method. Note Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  6. Step 5 Move the three diagonal crosshairs to the extremities of the chart axes… like so (it doesn’t matter which one goes where) It is important to do this accurately [Aside: for some reason attempting to zoom makes the program crash on my machine, so perhaps avoid doing this] Step 5 Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  7. Step 6 Step 6 In the coloured Ref boxes at top left, define the co-ordinates of these points as they appear on the graph Just like Year 10 Geometry, the X (horizontal) value comes first, then the vertical After you put in each reference, click on the relevant ref button to lock in the point. The crosshair will flash for a few seconds Once you’ve entered all three, the bar to the right should go partly green (the more green, the more accurate your graph definition, but don’t stress on this too much) Note there are 36 months from the origin to where the green co-ordinate is.. the horizontal axis could also be just numbers Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  8. Step 7 & 8 Step 7 Left mouse clicks will create data-points on the graph – you can then drag them to improve accuracy If you need to remove a point created in error hit the erase button. You can clear all the data-points and start over by going to Data -> Clear ERASE Step 8 Hit Ctrl + E to export the data Save it as a text file in an easily accessible location As a general rule, do one series at a time to avoid confusion and export them separately Data-points Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  9. Step 9 Step 9 OUTPUT Open Excel, Press Alt-D-D-D to import external data (also accessible from Data menu) Select your text file Choose Delimited, and start the export from Row 2 to cull the file name In the next screen, check the Comma tick box Click Next, then Finish and put the data where you want it That’s about all there is to it. Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  10. Note: This works just as well for bar charts, but the horizontal axis may be a bit meaningless Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

  11. Note: If you have a line chart with well defined colouring you can make Datathief trace each series for you Approach Define the axes as before Press Ctrl + M to turn off points mode Move the Light Green crosshair to the start of the series, and the Bright red one to the end Now move the second blue one to somewhere on the line series so that the colour box in the control panel shows the correct colour with 100% Hit the trace button and it should trace over the line for you, recording data points (a lot of them) as it goes You can now export the data as you did in the simpler example. If you want less data points you can alter the frequency in Preferences->Data Definition by changing ‘All Points’ to ‘Output distance’ with a defined interval length Trace Colour Box Z:\Stuff\lek.pot

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