Don’t Try This With Excel

In this post I show 4 charts of the same data to demonstrate  what Excel chart users are missing by not having a more powerful charting tool. This post,  building on my previous discussion of using factors for conditional formatting,  shows the potential advantages of plotting summary values and bounding area polygons . These analytical displays are not readily available to even advanced Excel users.

Learn R Toolkit Videos

My list of free Learn R Toolkit videos is growing. Here’s the latest list of free videos:

• Get Familiar with R
• Download & Install R
• Configure Working Directory – Set Start-in Folder
• Example R Session
• Getting R Help
• R Packages
• Compare R and Excel Worlds
• Missing Data – R and Excel

Modules 3-6 of the toolkit includes video training, working R scripts and data files to get you started writing R chart scripts in less than a day. Modules 3 – 6 are available for $19 with my  money back guarantee.

So there’s no reason for you to put off learning R. You now have a risk free way to start using R  for your advanced charts.

Excel Deja Vu All Over Again

In reading a recent Excel charting post, I got that Yogi Berra feeling, “..this is deja vu all over again”. I could have sworn that I had made or seen  a similar chart several years ago. This  post looks into the deja vu mystery and reports on my findings. You’ll have to read this post to see if Yogi’s quote applies to Excel charts.

Excel’s Missing Factor

In this post I show how R’s factor data type allows users to produce effective charts much more quickly and simply than Excel. Since Excel does not include a “factor” data type, users need to use tricks and workarounds to categorize and display factor type data.

Excel Example Data Set

In  his “VBA to Split Data Range into Multiple Chart Series“  (May, 2008) , Jon Peltier writes:

“A common problem is to make a chart from a list like this one. You want separate series for each item in one column (e.g., the cities in the first column), but your list is different every time, and you have to spend an hour assigning data to each series in the chart.

This is a job for VBA. It’s possible to write a simple loop that reads the first column of the range, grouping rows together by item.”

Learn R Toolkit

Learn R Toolkit: I have developed this toolkit to help Excel users quickly learn R so that you can make those advanced charts that you really want to make. I use over 100 PowerPoint slides, 19 videos 40 R scripts, 12 data files and 3 Excel workbooks to lead you up the R learning curve as quickly and comfortably as possible.

As an Excel user, I explain essential R concepts using Excel examples and terminology so that you can learn R fundamentals using your Excel knowledge. The videos demonstrate the R scripts and then you use the same R scripts in a series of assignments. The R scripts are fully commented and organized for reuse so that you can use them as starter scripts for you real world projects. Finally, the PowerPoint slides can be printed out to give you a valuable memory jogger resource. This toolkit will save you many hours learning R.

Visit my web page to get more information about Learn R Toolkit.