Excel 2010 Bible

Part III: Creating Charts and Graphics

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FIGURE 18.28

Using a stacked column chart is a better choice.

Radar

Radar charts are listed in the Other Charts category. You may not be familiar with this type of

chart. A radar chart is a specialized chart that has a separate axis for each category, and the axes

extend outward from the center of the chart. The value of each data point is plotted on the corre-

sponding axis.

Figure 18.29 shows an example of a radar chart. This chart plots two data series across 12 catego-

ries (months) and shows the seasonal demand for snow skis versus water skis. Note that the water-

ski series partially obscures the snow-ski series.

On the CD
A workbook that contains the charts in this section is available on the companion CD-ROM. The file is named
radar charts.xlsx.

Using a radar chart to show seasonal sales may be an interesting approach, but it’s not the best. As

you can see in Figure 18.30, a stacked bar chart shows the information much more clearly.

A more appropriate use for radar charts is shown in Figure 18.31. These four charts each plot a

color. More precisely, each chart shows the RGB components (the contributions of red, green, and

blue) that make up a color. Each chart has one series, and three categories. The categories extend

from 0 to 255.