Polar Area Chart aka SPIE charts

[madmarki]

i was wondering inf anyone knew if it is possible in XL to plot what i believe is known as a Polar Area Chart or SPIE chart. This is a pie chart with equal angled slices, but where the radius varies depending on the data.


Famously Florence Nightingale used such a diagram, to show the causes of mortality in each month of the Crimean war.


this can be seen on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart under the Polar Area Chart heading.

 

[Luke M]

Not a direct answer, but as Chandoo and Jon Peltier have pointed out that pie charts are often over-used and not that great at converying a message with more than 2 or 3 series...

The polar chart apears to just be a circular stacked column chart. (Test questions: in example chart, is Novemeber = July? December = March? These should be easy comparisons, and they're not) Is there some great benefit to making the bars go around in a circle?

 

[madmarki]

Re: Luke M >


"Is there some great benefit to making the bars go around in a circle?"


here is an article that explains why they are useful:


http://www.neoformix.com/2006/MultiLevelPieChart.html

 

[Luke M]

Here's the closest I could find:

http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/donut-pie-combination/


Jon's final outcome (not counting the dart board) looks a lot like the MultiLevel Pie Chart. I suppose if you wanted to create something similar to teh Polar Area chart Nighingale created, you could format some of the series to be invisible.


Hopefully this helps?

 

[madmarki]

Thanks Luke


Not quite what i was looking for, but its given me some ideas.