Making Good Plots With excel (Abstract)

Volume 38 number 1 (2010)

Michael Koppelman

Abstract

(Abstract only) Microsoft excel is used by many amateur and professional astronomers for data analysis. excel also has plotting capabilities which are often used in their default settings, which create plots that are hard to read and contain many violations of good style. Based on the work of Edward Tufte, I will present examples of good plots and bad plots and demonstrate how to make a good plot with Microsoft excel.