The Future of Excel Charts?
I read “The Office 12 charting application could make use of Avalon” at eweek awhile back so when I saw channel 9 had a video demonstrating Avalon’s 3D graphics I decided to take a look.
It turns out there were a couple minutes in the video that demonstrate Avalon displaying a Bar Chart, and it’s amazing. Possibly a glimpse into the future of Excel charting?
Daniel Lehenbauer, “a software design engineer on the Avalon team and he’s responsible for the 3D features of Avalon” says this is an example of the “Sizzle and Wow factor that we can bring to Data Visualization in Business Applications”
I found the screenshot at www.eightypercent.net
If you can’t blind them with brilliance, befuddle them with “sizzle and wow”.
A nice line chart would show that data without the distortions inherent in 3D charts viewed from an oblique angle.
- Jon
it’s not the best example is it, 3 d charts ca be a difficult beast, but nice to think that excel might get some decent charting tools one day.
I was looking at the R langue a few days ago, that seams to have some good charting features:
http://www.r-project.org/
i saw this aswell which made me laugh:
goto section BAD GRAPHICS
http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html
oh well!
spreadsheet_addiction hits the nail on the head about improper use of 3D graphics:
“In most graphics a three-dimensional effect merely makes the graph harder to interpret.”
Then it goes on to critique a particularly bad chart choice, 3D pie charts.
So Ross, what’s a rock and roller doing in the Excel blogs, anyway??
lol, we gotta to earn a living until we hit the big time!!!
– which colud be quite a while, lol!