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How to use ChatGPT to make charts and tables
Know what floats my boat? Charts and graphs.
Give me a cool chart to dig into and I'm unreasonably happy. I love watching the news on election nights, not for the vote count, but for all the great charts. I switch between channels all evening to see every possible way that each network finds to present numerical data.
Is that weird? I don't think that's weird.
Also: The moment I realized ChatGPT Plus was a game-changer for my business
As it turns out, ChatGPT does a great job making charts and tables. And given that this ubiquitous generative AI chatbot can synthesize a ton of information into something chart-worthy, what ChatGPT gives up in pretty presentation it more than makes up for in informational value.
Exactly what sort of chart-making tools are available for ChatGPT? There are three ways you can proceed:
- You can make tables (but not charts) in the free version of ChatGPT
- You can make charts and tables using the Advanced Data Analysis (formerly "Code Interpreter") add-on to ChatGPT Plus
- You can make tables using ChatGPT Plus and charts using random charting plugins
In this article, I'll be discussing the first two options, but skipping over the third. While there are a variety of charting plugins for ChatGPT Plus, they all take you out of the ChatGPT interface and employ external services. They all attempt to charge an upsell fee to get you to use their SaaS-based charting services. Essentially, they're listed in the ChatGPT store as ads, not as out-of-the-box functional tools. Plus, they tend to be very unreliable.
Note: What ChatGPT used to call "Code Interpreter" is now called "Advanced Data Analysis". So whenever we previously used the term Code Interpreter, we'll now be moving on to calling it Advanced Data Analysis.
Advanced Data Analysis produces relatively ugly charts. But it rocks. First, let's discuss where ChatGPT gets its data, then we'll make some tables.
How to use ChatGPT to make charts and tables
Step 1: Understand the different versions of ChatGPT
Earlier, we talked about which charting tools are available in which versions of ChatGPT. But there's more to it than simply charting tools. If you want to use ChatGPT productively, you need to understand what the various editions can do.
ChatGPT free version: This version uses the GPT-3.5 large language model (LLM), which isn't quite as capable as the GPT-4 version. From a data point of view, its view of worldly knowledge ends in September 2021. You can paste about 1,500 words of data into the chat dialog, which it is capable of processing.
ChatGPT Plus: ChatGPT Plus is OpenAI's commercial, fully powered version of ChatGPT. It is so popular that they had to turn on a waitlist for new subscriptions. It is also a very, very fast moving target. So when I describe which features to choose within ChatGPT Plus, keep in mind that things are changing on a weekly and sometimes even a daily basis. Right now, ChatGPT Plus provides three major selection options per session: GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and plugins.
The GPT-4 version now includes DALL-E 3, Bing Web access, and Advanced Data Analysis. Some users have reported some difficulty with using Bing for web access. Most of what we will be doing is using the Advanced Data Analysis component. Even without Bing web access, GPT-4 reports that its training data now includes information up to April 2023. This is a big change, because just two months ago, GPT-4's training database ended in September 2021.
Also: GPT-3.5 vs GPT-4: Is ChatGPT Plus worth its subscription fee?
For much of this article, we will be using the Advanced Data Analysis component of the GPT-4 option. This tool will import data tables in a wide range of file formats. While it doesn't specify a size limit for imported data, it can handle fairly large files, but will break if the files exceed some undefined level of complexity.
As ChatGPT Plus changes, and it will, we will update you with more information. For now, let's just look at making some cool charts.
ChatGPT Plus with WebPilot plugin: This version also uses the GPT-4 LLM. Basically, you can run either Advanced Data Analytics or plugins. If you choose to run plugins, the WebPilot plugin is fairly reliable when it comes to web searches (although it breaks on big requests). That capability means that ChatGPT's worldly knowledge doesn't need to end in 2021, but can generally extend to the current date.
ChatGPT Enterprise: Advanced Data Analytics and plugins are also available in the newly announced enterprise version. You can upload files to Enterprise, and they will remain confidential. Enterprise is also supposed to allow for bigger files and bigger responses. Pricing has not been specified.
Step 2: Create a basic table
Let's start with an example. For the following demonstration, we'll be working with the top five cities in terms of population.
List the top five cities in the world by population. Include country.
I asked this question to ChatGPT's free version and here's what I got back:
Turning that data into a table is simple. Just tell ChatGPT you want a table:
Make a table of the top five cities in the world by population. Include country.
Step 3: Manipulate the table
You can manipulate and customize a table by giving ChatGPT more detailed instructions. Again, using the free version, we'll add a population count field. Of course, that data is out of date, but it's presented anyway:
Make a table of the top five cities in the world by population. Include country and a population field
You can also specify certain details for the table, like field order and units. Here, I'm moving the country first and compressing the population numbers.
Make a table of the top five cities in the world by population. Include country and a population field. Display the fields in the order of rank, country, city, population. Display population in millions (with one decimal point), so 37,833,000 would display as 37.8M.
Note that I gave the AI an example of how I wanted the numbers to display.
That's about as far as the free version will take us. From now on, we're switching to the $20/month ChatGPT Plus version.
Step 4: Create a bar chart
ChatGPT Plus with Advanced Data Analytics enabled can make line charts, bar charts, histograms, pie charts, scatter plots, heatmaps, box plots, area charts, bubble charts, Gantt charts, Pareto charts, network diagrams, Sankey diagrams, choropleth maps, radar charts, word clouds, treemaps, and 3D charts.
In this example, we're just going to make a simple bar chart.
Make a bar chart of the top five cities in the world by population
Chatty little tool, isn't it?
The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed the discrepancy in populations between the previous table shown and the results here. Notice that the table has a green icon and this graph has a purple icon. We've jumped from GPT-3.5 (the free version of ChatGPT) to GPT-4 (in ChatGPT Plus). It's interesting that the differing LLMs have slightly different data. This difference is all part of why it pays to be careful when using AIs, so double-check your work. In our case, we're just demonstrating charts, but this is a tangible example of where confidently presented data can be wrong or inconsistent.
Step 5: Upload data
One of Advanced Data Analytics' superpowers is the ability to upload a dataset. For our example, I downloaded the Popular Baby Names dataset from Data.gov. This is a comma-separated file of New York City baby names from 2011-2014. Even though it's a decade out of date, it's fun to play with.
The dataset I chose for this article is readily available from a government site, so you can replicate this experiment on your own. There are a ton of great datasets available on Data.gov, but I found that many are far too large for ChatGPT to use.
Also: How to use ChatGPT to create an app
Once I downloaded this one, I realized it also included information on ethnicity, so we can run a number of different charts from the same dataset.
Click the little upload button and then tell it the data file you want to import.
I asked it to show me the first five lines of the file so I'd know more about the file's format.
Step 6: Create a pie chart (and change colors)
I was curious about how the dataset distributed gender names. Here's my first prompt:
Create a pie chart showing gender as a percentage of the overall dataset
And here's the result:
Unfortunately, the dark shade of green makes the numbers difficult to read. Fortunately, you can instruct Advanced Data Analytics to use different colors. I was careful to choose colors that did not reinforce gender stereotypes.
Create a pie chart showing gender as a percentage of the overall dataset. Use light green for male and medium yellow for female.
Step 7: Normalize data for accuracy
As we saw earlier, the data collected includes ethnicity. Here's how to see the distribution of the various ethnicities New York recorded in the early 2010s:
Show the distribution of ethnicity in the dataset using a pie chart. Use only light colors.
And here's the result. Notice anything?
Apparently, New York didn't properly normalize its data. It used "WHITE NON HISPANIC" and "WHITE NON HISP" together, "BLACK NON HISPANIC" and "BLACK NON HISP" together, and "ASIAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER" and "ASIAN AND PACI" together. This resulted in inaccurate representations of the data.
One benefit of ChatGPT is it remembers instructions throughout a session. So I was able to give it this instruction:
For all the following requests, group "WHITE NON HISPANIC" and "WHITE NON HISP" together. Group "BLACK NON HISPANIC" and "BLACK NON HISP" together. Group "ASIAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER" and "ASIAN AND PACI". Use the longer of the two ethnicity names when displaying ethnicity.
And it replied:
Let's try the chart again, using the same prompt.
Show the distribution of ethnicity in the dataset using a pie chart. Use only light colors.
That's better:
You need to be diligent when looking at results. For example, in a request for top baby names, the AI separated out "Madison" and "MADISON" as two different names:
For all the following requests, baby names should be case insensitive.
Step 8: Export your graphics
Let's wrap up with a complex chart from one prompt. Here's our prompt:
For each ethnicity, present two pie charts, one for each gender. Each pie chart should list the top five baby names for that gender and that ethnicity. Use only light colors.
As it turns out, the chart generated text that was too small to read. So, to get a more useful chart, we can export it back out. I'm going to specify both file format and file width:
Export this chart as a 3000 pixel wide JPG file.
And here's the result:
Notice that Sofia and Sophia are very popular, but are shown as two different names. But that's what makes charts so fascinating.
FAQ
How much does it cost to use Advanced Data Analytics?
Advanced Data Analytics comes with ChatGPT Plus as a beta feature you have to turn on in the Settings panel. ChatGPT Plus is $20/month. Advanced Data Analytics also is included with the Enterprise edition, but pricing for that hasn't been released yet.
Is the data uploaded to ChatGPT for charting kept private or is there a risk of data exposure?
Assume that there's always a privacy risk.
I asked this question to ChatGPT and this is what it told me: Data privacy is a priority for ChatGPT. Uploaded data is used solely for the purpose of the user's current session and is not stored long-term or used for any other purposes. However, for highly sensitive data, users should always exercise caution and consider using the Enterprise version of ChatGPT, which offers enhanced data confidentiality.
Also: Generative AI brings new risks to everyone. Here's how you can stay safe
My recommendation: Don't trust ChatGPT or any generative AI tool. The Enterprise version is supposed to have more privacy controls, but I would recommend you only upload data that you won't mind finding its way to public visibility.
Can ChatGPT's Advanced Data Analysis handle real-time data or is it more suited for static datasets?
It's possible, but there are some practical limitations. First, the Plus account will throttle the number of requests you can make in a given period of time. Second, you have to upload each file individually. There is the possibility you could use a licensed ChatGPT API to do real-time analytics. But for the chatbot itself, you're looking at parsing data at rest.
You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter on Substack, and follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.