New Charting Utility - Dot Plots
Another installment from Insomniac Software Inc.
I’ve added a page on my web site about Dot Plots. These are like a line chart turned on its side, with labels up the left hand axis, and dots positioned horizontally according to the plotted value. Or they’re like bar charts with a hidden bar and a dot at the end of the bar.
On my web page, I link to studies of the relative effectiveness of dot plots vs. bar charts, and I give tutorials on how to produce worksheet function (in-cell) and conventional chart versions of dot plots.
I also have built a utility to aid in construction of dot plots without having to remember all those stupid steps. The utility lets you select the data and choose from a few options, then spit out a nice dot plot. The Dot Plot utility is designed to work in Excel versions 2000, 2002, and 2003; it has not been tested in any Macintosh version or in Excel 97 or 2007, it may or may not work on these versions. The Dot Plot utility is a beta version, available at no cost in exchange for useful feedback. Ultimately it will be incorporated into a commercial Advanced Charting utility. The user interface looks like this:
and the output typically looks like this:
The Dot Plot utility is available at Dot Plots, which also has instructions for its installation and use.
I welcome any comments and suggestions, and will probably implement most reasonable feature requests.
Ian Huitson:
Jon
This will be a great set of utilities when you get the whole lot together
Hui…
10 September 2006, 4:16 pmRich Shields:
Howdy, Jon. I know you said these are not geared to Macs, but I donwloaded the Dot Plots xla and tried it anyway. While there was an error message about “border” (I can provide full message tonight), it still produced the Dot Plot as expected, with one major variation. The labels ended showed on the right side of the graph rather than the left. Otherwise the utility seemed to work fine.
Mac OS 10.3.9
11 September 2006, 7:57 amExcel 2004
bobb2622:
Jon,
I love the Dot Plots, I can already think of some great applications for the chart. I have 3 questions.
1. Will we be able to combine the Dot Plot with other charts or even another Dot Plot chart? Say, I wanted to show the average of your 16 values as a straight line, or one dot on the chart.
2. I noticed your Box and Whisker chart had color, will we be able to change the color of the Dots? I have visions of multi-colored dots raining down the screen, of course that could be for other reasons.
3. We will be able to change the shape of the dots? Say I want squares, or dollar signs or something else unique to the data I am presenting.
Just some random questions. Otherwise, I like the Utility and keep up the good work, charts are good, more people need to use them.
Thanks.
12 September 2006, 12:34 pmBobb
bobb2622:
Ok,
So it would help if I actually clicked on the link and looked at your website before I left my comments. Ignore my questions as I think all of them were answered.
Thanks.
12 September 2006, 1:30 pmBobb
unrädschistert:
Jon,
coming back from a week off (in the mountains) just to see topic no.1 of my “playlist” is done.
“Shame” on you and thanks!!
Can’t we make this a habit?
unrädschistert
12 September 2006, 1:40 pmJon Peltier:
Hey Bobb -
RTFM, eh? But I’ll post some answers so anyone else can read them too.
These utilities all create regular Excel charts, nothing magical except for formatting and some extra hidden series to help with the smoke and mirrors. Double click on a visible series and you can change its patterns just like any other series (marker shape and size if it’s an XY or Line series, colors for any series). If you want an indicator line, add it like you would to any other chart. You could add additional XY series to make a multiple dot chart, but that sounds like something I could just as easily build into the utility. Maybe in next week’s release.
12 September 2006, 4:07 pmMister Ian’s Weblog from Kuwait » Daily Dose of Excel - New Charting Utility - Dot Plots:
[…] Daily Dose of Excel » Blog Archive » New Charting Utility - Dot Plots […]
27 September 2006, 1:04 amJon Peltier:
Update:
The Dot Plot Utility has been updated to allow multiple series of dots. It also has its own web page, so you don’t need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the Dot Plots page:
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/DotPlotter.html
30 June 2007, 11:34 am