Svalbard Pilot Graphs

Thanks to Val Vannet (or was it Tony Cassidy ?) for the instructions below, which have been adapted for KES pupils.

Creating a Svalbard Climate Graph using the Excel Spreadsheet Programme

Collect the data that you are going to plot on your graph. You will find this in Pupils on Curriculum (U), Geography, Pilot GCSE Geography. Highlight the table if necessary, and copy the data. Open up an Excel spread sheet and paste this data into it.
Then highlight all the data that you have entered and click on the chart wizard.

• Choose the first type of Column graph

and then click ‘next’ until you get to Step 3

of the wizard.

• Type in the chart title e.g. ‘Climate Graph of Svalbard’, then the x-axis label ‘Month’s and then finally type in ‘Rainfall (mm)’ for the y-axis.
• Select the ‘Legend’ tab at the top of the wizard and untick ‘Show Legend’
  

• Click ‘next’ and in Step 4 of the wizard choose the option ‘As new sheet’. Type in Climate Graph for Svalbard in place of ‘Chart 1’ and click ‘Finish’.
• At this stage, your graph should look like this example with the data shown as two sets of columns (except you will have columns above and below zero)
• The next task is to convert the temperature data to a line graph.
• Move your mouse over one of the temperature columns (in blue) and right-click. From the option box that opens, choose ‘Chart Type’ and then ‘Line’ graph as the type of graph. The temperature data will then be plotted as a line graph.

• The next task is to move the temperature line upwards. To do this, right-click on the line, choose ‘Format Data Series’ from the option box that appears, then select the Axis tab at the top and click on ‘Secondary axis’.

The temperature graph should adjust itself and be much clearer now.

The scale on the Rainfall axis needs to be changed (otherwise it will appear as if Svalbard receives a lot of precipitation – which it doesn’t!) To do this, right click on the

y axis line and choose ‘format axis’. Open the ‘scale’ tab and change ‘maximum’ to 50.

Now click OK. The rainfall bars will now be much shorter.

The final task is to add a label to the new y-axis on the right.

To do this, click on the chart wizard again and click through to Step 3.

In Step 3 (under ‘titles’ tab ), a new box should have appeared called ‘Secondary value (Y) axis’. Use this to enter a label for the temperature data e.g.

Temperature (degrees Centigrade)

Once you have done that click ‘next’ and ‘finish’

Save your work!

If you have time, continue to the next page where you will learn how to improve the

appearance of your graph.

Improve the appearance of your climate graph

To change the colour of your line :

• Right click on the line and choose ‘format data series’. Under the ‘patterns’ tab, choose ‘custom’
• Drop down the arrow beside ‘colour’ and choose red, for example.
• At this point you can also increase the thickness of the line by dropping down the ‘weight’ arrow
• You could also experiment with the style of line and the shape of the marker points if you like

To change the colour of your bars :

• Right click on one of the bars and choose ‘format data series’. Under the ‘patterns’ tab, you can change the border colour and the fill colour for the bars
• Try outlining in white and filling in blue.

You could even put a picture of Svalbard as a background to your graph. There are several in the same folder as these instructions which you could use. Alternatively, you could search and save a picture to your Documents.

• Right click on the grey background and select ‘format plot area’
• Under ‘Area’ choose ‘fill effects’ and then choose ‘Picture’ tab
• Click ‘select picture’ and navigate to the picture you want to use.
• Click ‘insert’ and it will appear in the ‘fill effects’ window
• Click ‘OK ’ and ‘OK’ again and hey presto…. you should have an amazing graph!!

May need to adapt this for Office 2007 - apologies for dodgy formatting on this post...