Comments on: You are NOT spider man, so why do you use radar charts?

By: Spider Chart Alternatives | PTS Blog

Spider Chart Alternatives | PTS Blog — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:49:30 +0000

[...] You are NOT spider man, so why do you use radar charts? Chandoo presented a “petal chart” as an alternative to a radar chart (or spider chart, [...]

By: Excel Spot Matrix Charts - An Alternative for Radar Charts - Download the Template | Pointy Haired Dilbert - Chandoo.org

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:35:39 +0000

[...] Petal Charts – an Alternative to Radar Charts I have suggested using a radar chart tweak to replace the radar charts. Both PTSBlog and [...]

By: Excel Links of the Week [Oct 06] | Pointy Haired Dilbert - Chandoo.org

Excel Links of the Week [Oct 06] | Pointy Haired Dilbert - Chandoo.org — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:05:19 +0000

[...] you use petal charts at all? In petal charts – an alternative to radar charts, I have proposed a radar chart hack that can used replace radar charts. I know that it is not a [...]

By: Chandoo

Chandoo — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:05:48 +0000

@Jon… thanks for that. I use this blog to learn a ton of stuff, blurting out the techniques as I use / find them out so that many more perspectives can be gathered. It makes me happy when tons of people like what I say here. But it makes me wiser when passionate people like you make sure that I understand the mistakes of things I say here. And that is precisely why I write, to become better.

@Derek … the excel is just a template, I am not sure if it had the data used in the post. Feel free to change it as you wish and I am sure it should produce the unreadable chart you have seen in this post.

By: derek

derek — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:50:56 +0000

Chandoo, where is the data that made your original unreadable radar chart? The download file just contains some tame tidy data that isn’t the same.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:37:20 +0000

Robert -

I’m not sure if you’re critiquing Chandoo’s approach or Excel’s. Chandoo is making a suggestion, saying, here’s something, try it out. Well, I tried it, decided it’s not an improvement over the radar chart, and I’ll write a short post explaining why, and suggesting that people stick the the tried and true line chart variations.

Ford had the Edsel, Chandoo has the petal chart, and for a long time my web site had a speedometer-type chart for Excel. It was wildly popular, and I could have gotten rich charging people to implement it. But I finally realized it went against the other lessons I was trying to get across. So it’s gone.

Excel has lots of ways to skin a cat. Some are quite painful, in terms of 3D types and pies and the like, and others are quite ugly, with nasty colors and effects (including the awful defaults). Some are ugly and painful. Sometimes I think my role is to work with the masses who use Excel daily, and help them find attractive and painless ways to get their tasks done.

By: Chandoo

Chandoo — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:47:38 +0000

@Robert … I agree that radar charts are not a very good way to show various decision alternatives (atleast that is what these charts are mostly used for)

That is where the petal charts come in to picture, they take familiar radar and turn it in to something where you can see all alternatives and how they have performed on a set of attributes.

All I said in the article is ..

“Here is where I guess Petal Charts can help.

Excuse the name, but Petal charts are nothing but tweaked radar charts that segregate the information yet somehow provide comparability…. You now have an interesting way to tell your story. What do you think?”

I am sorry if the article sounded like “replace all radar charts with petals” but the intention at PHD is always to show alternatives. And they are good and bad things about them.

I am happy to learn that petals / radars unintentionally convert lengths to areas.

By: Robert Kosara

Robert Kosara — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:12:24 +0000

I’m all for discussion, I just don’t understand PHD’s motivation. Criticizing a chart and then providing an Excel file is like saying “It’s bad to poison your neighbor’s cat, but here’s a list of good poisons and places to get them.” I don’t need to poison my neighbor’s cat to figure out that I shouldn’t do it, and I don’t need to see my own data in a radar chart to know it’s a bad idea.

By: Chandoo

Chandoo — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:41:50 +0000

@Robert… I agree with you that radar / petal plots convert lengths to area without meaning it. Your post on Linear vs. Quadratic is quite insightful.

@Jon… Agree, What is a blog with out discussion?

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:31:17 +0000

Robert -

Chandoo has a knack for picking controversial topics. Good post about areal data encoding.