DataGraph alternatives for Windows systems

Recently, on a friend's Mac I came across a wonderful application for plotting in numerous ways numeric data - DataGraph. I've always done this sort of thing with Excel, and with newer versions, to me (this is emphasized "to me", so this doesn't get taken as an Excel rant post), it's becoming troublesome.

Are there applications like this (specialized for one thing they do good and relatively simple ... I'm not interested in CFD visualization packages in here.) for Windows? All suggestions welcomed.

p.s. GUI applications ! Not interested in plotting libraries either.

alt text

visualization

Rook

Posted 2010-05-10T18:37:03.113

Reputation: 21 622

Answers

try http://www.gnuplot.info/, it's free and works well. I've used it very large data sets

bryan

Posted 2010-05-10T18:37:03.113

Reputation: 7 848

1Hardly the same ... even by a longshot. No interface, always meddling with syntax, getting different kinds of plots means writing different programs ... it may be nice to someone who knows it's syntax by heart, but to people who just want to get the graph with no extra fuss, it is a world of difference. – Rook – 2010-05-10T19:16:05.950

front ends are available. No need to learn syntax by heart, just find what you need. – bryan – 2010-05-10T19:32:46.747

could you provide some examples ? – Rook – 2010-05-10T20:33:00.677

I used it a couple of years ago, and don't have the sample data or scripts to hand, but I know it didn't take more than a few mins. And one of the the great things is that the resolution of the graph is only dependent on the source data. Some simpler tools can't achieve this. – bryan – 2010-05-10T20:51:39.220

No. I mean, examples of frontends. I've used gnuplot before as a plotting library in some of my programs. But it's not what I'm looking for now (in that way, anyway). – Rook – 2010-05-10T22:24:42.990

Try Sigmaplot. It is a pro's tool.

SigmaPlot graphing software from Systat Software takes you beyond simple spreadsheets to help you show off your work clearly and precisely. With SigmaPlot, you can produce high-quality graphs without spending hours in front of a computer. SigmaPlot offers seamless Microsoft Office integration, so you can easily access data from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and present your results in Microsoft PowerPoint® presentations.

just me

Posted 2010-05-10T18:37:03.113

Reputation: 11

Spotfire and Tableau are amazing commercial applications for this, and Spotfire especially is incredibly easy to use to explore lots of visualizations side-by-side. Both are expensive, though. IBM's Many Eyes project is a free web-based collaborative tool that has lots of charts available.

edallme

Posted 2010-05-10T18:37:03.113

Reputation: 216