Graphing With Excel Presented by Frank H. Osborne, Ph. D. © 2008 ID 2950 Technology and the Young Child

Basic Considerations Excel is a useful program for both students and teachers to handle data. Standard Excel has built-in templates for various graphs. Most will come in a variety of versions ranging from something simple to quite fancy, including 3-dimensional drawings.

Basic Considerations The first thing that you want to do is to open up Excel. Immediately, save the file to your USB drive. An appropriate name would be Graphs.xls. You will be printing out your graphs and turning them in. Note, these directions are for Excel 2003 or earlier.

Pie Chart Sample data for colors of M&Ms candy

Pie Chart 1. Type data into Excel; using labels. Then, highlight the data. Data Chart Wizard

Pie Chart 2. Click on the Chart Wizard (icon that looks like 3 bars) 3. Select Pie graph; keeping it simple.

Pie Chart 4. Click Next to see the prototype.

Pie Chart 5. Click Next again. Change the title of the graph.

Pie Chart 6. Click on Data labels – you can have the words put by the sectors, add the value and/or the percentage. If you use labels, you can click on legend and remove the legend.

Pie Chart Click Next. You can put the graph either in the same sheet or in a new sheet. The advantage to putting it in the same work sheet is that you can then copy it into a Word document.

Bar Graph For the same data, we can make a bar graph. Click on the Chart wizard and select column graph.

Bar Graph Click Next.

Bar Graph Click next again. Click on the title tab. Add a title for the graph as well as labels for the 2 axes.

Bar Graph Click on the legend tab and remove the legend. Click next and place the graph either in the same sheet or in a new sheet.

Exercise Make a Pie Chart and a Bar Graph using the following data. Sample Data for Ages of Students

Pie Chart Type in data as shown.

Pie Chart Then follow the same steps used with the m&m data.

Bar Graph Type in the data, but just use the first number in each age group. This is to show you a different technique.

Bar Graph Highlight the data, select column graph, go to step 2 of the chart wizard.

Bar Graph Note the graph prototype shows 2 sets of bars. Click on the series tab. You must remove the series called age and then, in the white space, type the reference for the range of values that give the ages. Follow the exact format as Excel types for the values, except change the letter of the column.

Bar Graph

Click next. In step 3, you will see the correct numbers along the x axis. Add the title, the labels for the axes, and remove the legend. Then finish the graph, either placing it in the same sheet or a new sheet.

Bar Graph One thing must be done for this graph. The bars should be connected because they represent a range of values. To do this, double click on any bar, use the options tab to make the gap width equal to zero.

Scatter Plot Scatter plot is used to show relationships between two variables. Sample Data for Height and Arm Length of Students

Scatter Plot Type in the data, putting the independent variable (x) first. Click on Chart wizard, select the scatter plot.

Scatter Plot Click next. Advance to step 3 of the chart wizard. Add the title and the labels, remove the legend.

Scatter Plot Place the graph either in a new sheet or the same sheet. We would like to add the Trend line (also called the regression line). On the PC, move near a data point, right click, select add trend line from the drop down menu.

Scatter Plot To add the Trendline on the Mac, click on the graph to activate it. Up on the top row is a new menu item called Chart. Click there and find "Add Trendline" as an option. It will give the same types of regressions as on the PC. Also, there is a back tab that allows you to add the equation of the regression line if desired.

Scatter Plot Under Type, we can use linear.

Scatter Plot Click on the Options tab and select display equation. This equation can be used for prediction of values, but only for values of x that the data goes between; in this case from 62 to 67. You can move it around on the graph.

Scatter Plot While the equation predicts a value for the arm length based on the height, it is not an absolute value for the arm length. People of the same height do not necessarily have the same arm length. There is a natural variation.

The End