Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel: Updated for Office 2007

Chapter 3 Working with Charts 83

It’s diffi cult to answer those questions by examining the table. Now let’s

plot those values in Figure 3-1.

April 2011 sales

figures do

not follow the

general pattern

Figure 3-1

Plotted

sales data

The chart clarifi es things for us. We notice immediately that the sales

fi gures seem to follow a classic seasonal curve with the highest sales occur-

ring during the late winter—early spring months. However, the sales fi gures

for April 2011 seem to be too low. Perhaps something occurred during this

time period that should be investigated, or perhaps an erroneous value was

entered. In any case, the chart has provided insights that would have been

diffi cult to immediately grasp from a table of values alone.

Excel supports several different chart types for different situations.

Table 3-2 shows a partial list of these.

Table 3-2 Excel Chart Types

Name Icon Description
Area An area chart displays the magnitude of change over
time or between categories. You can also display the
sum of group values, showing the relationship of each
part to the whole.
Column A column chart shows how data change over time or
between categories. Values are displayed vertically,
categories horizontally.
(continued)