Making Excel Charts

Copyright (c) 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. This material is intended solely for educational use by licensed users of LearningStats. It may not be copied or resold for profit.

Whats Your Data Type?

Your data type dictates the acceptable chart type.
Note: Only Excel charts are listed. Statistics packages (e.g., SPSS, Minitab) offer more choices for statistical data analysis. MegaStat (or similar Excel add-ins) will enhance Excels basic charts and make them nicer.

Cross sectional data (x1, x2, , xn) Numerical data: histogram, bar chart Categorical data: bar, column, pie Time series data (y1, y2, , yn): line chart, bar chart Bivariate data (x1,y1), (x2,y2), , (xn,yn): scatter plot

Chart Types
Here are the Excel charts you are most likely to use in a statistics class.

Chart Edit Tools

After you have created a chart, you can customize it using the Design, Layout, or Format ribbon.

Chart Types
To add a title and axis labels, click on the chart and use the Layout ribbon).

Line Chart: Data Entry

Step 1. Enter the data.

Select Data
Step 2. Highlight the data (not the heading).

Select Chart
Step 3. Click Insert ribbon and choose chart type and style.

These data are a time series, so we might choose a line chart.

Axis Labels?
Step 4. Right-click on graph and choose Select Data.

This is an annual time series, so we want to put years on the x-axis.

Select Axis Labels

Step 5. Enter x-axis label range after you click Edit.

This is an annual time series, so we want to put years on the x-axis.

Align Data with Axis Ticks?

Step 6. Right-click on x-axis and position labels.

Excel centers each data value in the middle of the axis interval. Thats OK for a bar chart, but for a line chart we want to align data with axis ticks (see next page to see the difference).

Customize Chart
Before Step 7. Click Layout ribbon and edit graph. After

Scatter Plot
Highlight data (not headings) and click Insert. Add axis labels later by clicking the Layout ribbon.

Pie Chart

Use a pie chart only when data comprises parts of a whole (e.g., market shares must sum to 100%). Does not work well if there are more than a few data values.

Bar Chart

A bar chart may be better than a pie chart to compare data magnitudes.

Time Series Bar Chart

Or you can use a bar chart to show a time series. But always put time on the x-axis.

Bottom Line

Charts are important in business. Excel charts are flexible.

But its defaults are rather plain.

Why not take control? Customize!