fancy graphing software

Posted by: Joe Petrik on 12 November 2003

I need to get a graphing package for an upcoming project at work. Until now I've been using Adobe Illustrator 10 for PC for our publications. Illustrator does a great job with straightforward graphs -- line, bar, scatter, pie, and so on -- but what it doesn't do is higher-level graphing, like including standard deviation or error bars on a bar graph, or producing more elaborate graphs, such as back-to-back histograms, which are all the rage if you plot population pyramids.

Does anyone know of a graphing package that does that sort of stuff? It has to be a professional package -- or whatever the term is for an application that can output quality graphs as .eps and high-res .tiff files, for example, and in either color mode (CMYK or RGB) -- since the output will be placed in a QuarkXPress document for printing. Ideally, the package would also allow you to choose hues by Pantone ink colours.

Thanks,
Joe

Posted on: 12 November 2003 by Joe Petrik

Norman.

Thanks, that looks to be exactly what I'm after.

I'm not sure what you mean by a proper computer. Mac vs. PC? or monster processor and loads of RAM vs. clunker with Alzheimer's?

FYI: I'm running a 2 GHz Xeon with a GB of RAM and dual monitors (22-inch Diamondtron at 1600x1200 and 17-inch Trinitron at 1024x768).

Joe

Posted on: 12 November 2003 by John Channing

Hi Joe,
It was a few years ago now, but I used Origin software when I was writing my PhD thesis and it should do everything you need.
John

Posted on: 12 November 2003 by Mekon

Weird - does that Prism program really run analyses based on data that it grabs from graphs?

FWIW, SPSS (the stats package I use) outputs graphs in the usual .gif/.bmp/.jpg files, but I suspect you want something considerably prettier.

Posted on: 12 November 2003 by Joe Petrik

Thanks, John. I'll have a look.

_____________________________________________

Mekon,

quote:
FWIW, SPSS (the stats package I use) outputs graphs in the usual .gif/.bmp/.jpg files, but I suspect you want something considerably prettier.

That's exactly the problem. SAS, the statistical package we use, can do fancy graphs but they're uglier than a bag of smashed arseholes.

Joe

Posted on: 13 November 2003 by Mekon

Smashed arseholes, indeed!

Can you not fancy-up what you have in a photo-ed type program?

Posted on: 13 November 2003 by Joe Petrik

Mekon,

quote:
Can you not fancy-up what you have in a photo-ed type program?

I have done that on occasion, but to get a SAS-generated graph to look the way I wanted using Photoshop took the better part of an afternoon. (In short, I had to redo everything from fonts to axes labels to tick marks to plot symbols.) There comes a point were chiselling a graph into stone would have been the easier and faster option.

Joe

Posted on: 13 November 2003 by matthewr

Could you not photograph the SAS graph with a Leica?

Matthew

Posted on: 13 November 2003 by Joe Petrik

Matthew,

quote:
Could you not photograph the SAS graph with a Leica?

If I had one. Unfortunately, I have only vastly inferior Nikkors that neither capture the luminescent quality of SAS graphs nor, because of the inferior bokeh of Japanese glass, create the creamy out-of-focus smoothness that outlier data points deserve.

Joe