A Bit More On Charting
更多一些圖表信息
Last week, in response to my post on charting, Harlan pointed at a few Economist charts as examples of professional charts. Today, I spent a few minutes with Excel 2007 trying to create a similar chart. I thought I would share the results.
The chart in question is located here. It is a line chart with a title and some series labels. Here is a screen shot.
上周，在我關(guān)于圖表的帖子之后，Harlan指出了一些專業(yè)圖表的例子如經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)圖表。今天，我在Excel 2007上花了幾分鐘，試圖創(chuàng)建一個(gè)類似的圖表。我想我應(yīng)該分享該結(jié)果。
問題中的圖表位于這里。這是一個(gè)折線圖，帶有標(biāo)題和一些系列標(biāo)簽。這里有個(gè)截屏。
Source: The Economist web site
To start with in Excel, I typed in the data (source: The Economist web site) and inserted a line chart …
為了從Excel開始，我輸入了數(shù)據(jù)（源：Economist網(wǎng)頁）并插入折線圖……
Here is what you will see in the beta build when you insert a line chart.
這是當(dāng)你插入折線圖時(shí)，你將在beta版里看到的情況。
As you can see, the Excel chart looks similar in composition with respect to good charting technique – there are no graphic effects, and the data is emphasized, axes, tick marks, and gridlines have been subdued to allow the data in the plot area to stand out more. Next, I decided to fiddle around with a few settings to see how hard it would be to get things closer. A few clicks to add a title, change where the vertical axis is, and resize the chart a bit and I had something looking very close.
正如你看到的，Excel圖表看上去和好的圖表技術(shù)在組成部分方面是相似的——沒有繪圖效果，強(qiáng)調(diào)了數(shù)據(jù)，軸，標(biāo)簽和網(wǎng)格線被柔和了以使圖表區(qū)的數(shù)據(jù)更突出。接著，我決定做一些設(shè)置，看看將事情弄得更相近一些會(huì)有多困難。點(diǎn)擊幾下，添加標(biāo)題，改變豎直坐標(biāo)軸的位置，并改變圖表大小，我有了個(gè)看上去很接近的東西了。
The one major difference is that the legend is outside the chart, and in the chart plot area next to each series. Again with a few more clicks, I removed the legend from the chart and added two text boxes (“OECD” and “Germany”) and positioned them near the appropriate data series. With a few more clicks, I have something very close.
一個(gè)主要的區(qū)別是圖例在圖表外頭，而應(yīng)該在圖表繪圖區(qū)每個(gè)系列的旁邊。同樣，再點(diǎn)擊幾下，我從圖表中刪除掉了圖例并且添加在兩個(gè)文本框（“OECD”和“Germany”）并將它們放在適當(dāng)?shù)臄?shù)據(jù)系列旁。更多點(diǎn)擊幾次，我得到了非常接近的東西了。
The point I am trying to get across here is that our default styles (and many of the other styles we include in Excel) are, I believe, what a lot of people are looking for with respect to “professional” and “effective”. (I know there are features that would make the above easier, and like I said in the previous post, we are planning to continue to work in that area going forward.) Here is what the same chart looks like when turned into a bar chart … again, the focus is on clarity of data.
我在這里想要表達(dá)的意思是，我相信，我們?nèi)笔〉臉邮剑ㄒ约拔以贓xcel包含的許多其它樣式）都是許多人們期望的“專業(yè)”和“有效的”圖表。（我知道有些功能可以使上述工作更任意些，并且正如我在前面的帖子說的，我們計(jì)劃繼續(xù)這個(gè)領(lǐng)域的工作。）當(dāng)轉(zhuǎn)換為柱型圖時(shí)，同一個(gè)圖表就會(huì)象這樣……同樣，側(cè)重點(diǎn)是突出數(shù)據(jù)。
So that’s it for today. Download the beta, try the styles, and let us know. As always, feedback welcome.
好啦，今天就到這兒。下載beta版，嘗試各種樣式，并且給我們反饋，反饋總是受歡迎的。
