Not signed in (Sign In)

Harvard Extension School: ECON/MATH graphing

Bottom of Page

1 to 9 of 9

  1.  
    • CommentAuthorLA86
    • CommentTimeFeb 6th 2010
     

    Whats the best way to make graphs on the computer? I tried using excel but its terrible.

    •  
      CommentAuthorBullneck
    • CommentTimeFeb 6th 2010
     

    I tried using Excel for one of the Federal Reserve exercises in MGMT E-2000 (not required for the class, BTW, but I didn't know that at the time) and the graph was pretty disappointing. I actually input two sets of data so there should have been two charts produced but that's not what it spit out. OTOH, Excel is pretty much the industry standard (though I'm a Mac user and love Numbers), so making it work is probably important. Anyone else have a more positive experience?

  3.  

    Minitab or Stata SE. You can download it from the FAS IT website.

    • CommentAuthorkattack
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2010
     

    Excel can produce decent basic graphs, but you really have to play around with formatting the data in a specific way if you want a more customized graph. As almcandidate has pointed out, you could use a statistical package such as Minitab or Stata which are available for free download from the FAS IT website. You may find Minitab to be a little more user friendly that Stata, but Stata is more widely used by social scientists so you might want to get good at using it if you plan to take more econ classes down the road.

    • CommentAuthorLA86
    • CommentTimeFeb 7th 2010
     

    Thanks everyone i'll check it out!

  6.  

    MATLAB has excellent graphing capabilities, far in excess of what Excel can do. It will do everything you could want to do.

    If you want an open-source alternative, MATPLOTLIB works with Python. I don't have direct experience of it, but I hear they have taken the plotting capabilities of MATLAB as an inspiration.

    Mike

    •  
      CommentAuthorBullneck
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2010 edited
     
    Posted By: almcandidate

    Minitab or Stata SE. You can download it from the FAS IT website.

    Thanks, I'll take a look. I noticed that Bruce Watson's Econ 10ab mentions Minitab; it just happened I was looking at the class description today (not sure how applicable it is to my degree plan, but it appears to be the prereq for a lot of Econ courses).

    •  
      CommentAuthorArt Wolf
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2010
     

    +1 for Mathlab, damn I hate it but it is good.

    • CommentAuthorLA86
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2010
     

    I actually downloaded a copy of the Matlab software. Can anyone suggest some good resources on learning how to use it? Thanks!

1 to 9 of 9

  1.  

This site is not affiliated in any way with Harvard University or the Harvard University Extension School, the Harvard University Summer School, or the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Division of Continuing Education.