The vast majority of Chart types offered by Excel should NEVER be used! Our next example shows the graph-types available as pyramid charts. None of these choices shown below represent good graphs! All but the last one display false third dimensions. In addition they all suggest stacked displays that are known to be poor ways to make comparisons.

(For the similar reasons, Excel’s column, cone, and cylinder charts don’t seem to have any redeeming features either!)
Scatterplots represent bread-and-butter graphs for visualizing relationships between variables. Scatterplots Should Have:
Good Choice of Axes
Meaningful Legends
No False Third Dimensions

However, Excel’s default scatterplots leave much to be desired. In the following example two data points have been covered up by the axis labels. Can you find them? And is the legend displayed to the right of the graph useful? Note that there is no label for the horizontal axis.

Histograms Should Have:
No Meaningless Gaps
A Reasonable Choice of Bins
An Easy Way To Choose Or Adjust The Bins
A Good Aspect Ratio
Meaningful Labels on Axes
Appropriate Labels on Bin Tick Marks

However, the next example shows a default histogram produced by Excel. The bin labels are impossible to read, the aspect ratio is poor, the legend and horizontal axis label are useless.

Download pdf Problems With Using Microsoft Excel for Statistics