There are many data analysis and charting tools that Excel users should check out to see what is available in the world outside Excel. I’ll be posting about interesting tools that I find and/or readers tell me about.  Here’s my first - Tinkerplots.

In this post, I show how to create a factor variable  from categorical data and analyze the role of the factor and the decade using  conditional  boxplots  on time series data.

In this post, I describe change points and show how to add change points to a trend chart with R. The chart shows El Nino - La Nina events and long term global temperature anomaly trends that I originally developed for the Excel Chart Doctor page. Readers can compare my R and Excel - VBA solutions for the same chart to compare R and Excel VBA charting programming.

In this post, I define a Tukey boxplot, review the history of boxplots in Excel and walk through an R script for making a proper Tukey boxplot. A link to the source data and R script files is provided.

In this post, I show how to make a step chart with R. The chart also includes a lowess smoother and annotations. The post walks through the R script and provides links to the R script and data file for those Excel users who want to try R to see for themselves what you can do with R.

In this post, I examine an R script to show how to:  1) Read dynamic data from a web site text file, 2) Determine number of data rows in file; 3) Determine date of last measurement, 4) Create dynamic  title; 5) Bank to 45, and 6) Create an XY Plot.  Excel users are encouraged to dust off their R program and try this script on your own PC. Links to the source data and script are provided in this post. 

This is my 2nd post on my transition to R. I show a Excel stacked column chart and the R Lattice version. The R Lattice version shows why lattice, trellis, small multiple displays are much moe effectiv than Excel's stacking techniques for multivariate data.

This post starts a series on my transition to R that may be of interest to those Excel chart users who struggle with Excel’s limited multivariate chart capabilities. I will post videos and provide source data files as well as R scripts on my ProcessTrends.com website for those who want to try R for themselves.

I have started the Charts and Graphs blog to discuss who is doing what with charts and graphs. Check it out! I'll be discussing principles of charting, review chart tools - software and participate in discussions with data visualization - charting bloggers.