Shaded 'radar' graph with markers

[pdberger]

Good afternoon --

Excel seems to come with 3 canned 'radar' graph formats -- lines w/o
markers, lines w/ markers, and shaded area. The shaded area comes w/o
markers.

I want to use the shaded radar graph but, if some or all of the data points
are at the origin, then it's almost impossible to see. I tried to format the
data series to add markers, but it doesn't seem to be there. Is there some
way for me to do it? I use Office2003.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Jon Peltier]

Plot two series using the same data in a filled radar chart. Select the
second series (it's the one in front, so it's easy), go to Format menu >
Selected Data Series > Axis tab, and choose Secondary. With the series still
selected, go to Chart menu > Chart Type, and choose the marker style radar
chart.

Radar charts suffer from distortion of their data. You've described the
mushing together of data close to zero. Another problem is that the data
values are harder to read in a radial dispersion than if they were all
parallel to orthogonal axes. Finally, the lines connecting points and
connecting spokes are straight, but they would be more accurately portrayed
as arcs, and of course, that would make them even harder to interpret. You
might find that one of the conventional chart types, or a combination of
these, will work together. An area chart, column chart, line chart, or
mixture of these, will not suffer from the distortion.

- Jon

 

[pdberger]

Jon --

Many thanks! I'll try that.

I agree with your observations of the problems but, for some other reasons,
they're serving us very well in this setting. I just need to clean them up
cosmetically as described. Thanks again.