Graphing beyond Excel ?

[sagobogger]

I'm interested to learn what programs folks are using when they need more sophisticated/flexible graphing than Excel can provide.

 

[SkipVought]

Hi,

With features like WHAT?

Skip,

_{Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE!}

 

[xlbo]

tbh, excel handles most things fine - I tend to find that if it is too complex for excel, it will be too complex to easily understand.....having said that, Dundas are pretty famous for their charts...

Rgds, Geoff

We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colours but they all live in the same box.

Please read FAQ222-2244 before you ask a question

 

[lionelhill]

I personally use Sigmaplot, but there are all sorts of alternatives out there. Sigmaplot is good for general scientific environments, and interfaces very well with Excel. It offers all the usual chart-types

There are two things that I particularly like about it.
(1) Absolutely everything on the chart can be modified individually to suit my requirements, including the sizes of graphs and where they appear on the page. For publication purposes you can align multiple graphs just touching one another without silly effects where lines nearly overlap etc., and if you want a graph exactly 100 by 70mm, you just have to type in 100 and 70. This sort of thing ought to go without saying, but making a publication-quality figure with Excel is a nightmare.

(2) It understands bar-charts where the x-data are numerical, and the bars have different widths.

As a side-line, it is also very good at line-fitting, with a wide range of built-in formulae, and unlike Excel, it will tell you when you try to fit a silly line and get bad parameters.

I'd never claim it's the best, though. I haven't tried the others.

 

[fneily]

Charts depend on your audience. I created an histogram for the Transportation department of my state. From lower level to the actual Governor, they all said it looked great. None of them knew what a histogram was. Typical politicians. Same thing happened at HCFA/CMS(federal). And gods forbid if instead of using Log. graphs you use the correct Hyperbolic chart.

 

[sagobogger]

Thank you lionelhill, I'll look at sigmaplot, I'm not familiar with that one.

"if you want a graph exactly 100 by 70mm, you just have to type in 100 and 70. This sort of thing ought to go without saying, but making a publication-quality figure with Excel is a nightmare."

Yup, my thoughts exactly.