Radar charts in Excel

This tutorial shows how to compute and interpret a radar chart with Excel using XLSTAT.

The goal of this tutorial is to visualize in a simple and efficient way the grades of each student. With a radar chart it will then be possible to easily compare the students with each other, or to compare them to the class average.

The data represent the marks of 5 students in 7 different subjects, as well as the class average by subject. This dataset is fictitious.

Setting up a radar chart in XLSTAT

Once XLSTAT is open, select the XLSTAT / Data visualization / Radar charts menu.

The dialog box pops up. In the General tab, select column A in the Variables field, and columns B to G in the Data field.

In the Options tab, different options are available to customize the graph in different ways. Select the following ones:

Interpreting a radar chart

First, we look at all the students on the same chart. This will allow you to easily compare students with each other and thus see which ones succeed best in one area or another and which ones struggle a little more.

To focus on a particular student, it is possible to select this student in the drop-down list at the top of the chart. For example, student 1 has, overall, average grades everywhere.

If you wish to compare a student to the class average, it is possible to recreate a chart by selecting only the column of this student and the average column. If we still look at student 1, we can easily notice that in History, French and English he has rather high average grades. However they are lower than average in science subjects. We can therefore directly see the points to improve for this student.

This type of chart is very useful for presenting the results of a scale of values or comparing responses to an average for example.