I gripe about Excel a lot, as we’re more or less forced to use it for data analysis in the intro labs (students who have taken the intro engineering course supposedly are taught how to work with Excel, and it’s kind of difficult to buy a computer without it these days, so it eliminates the “I couldn’t do anything with the data” excuse for not doing lab reports). This is a constant source of irritation, as the default settings are carefully chosen so as to make it difficult for students to do a good job of data presentation.
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Now, you might be saying “Well, of course Excel isn’t appropriate for scientific data analysis. It’s not really for scientists, though.” Which is true, but here’s the thing: the things I’ve complained about here aren’t good for anything. The color schemes and axis settings lead to illegible plots no matter what sort of data you’re working with. And I’m completely at a loss as to the purpose of the “Line” plot, or making it difficult to find uncertainties in fitted quantitites.
—Professor Chad Orzel, Why Does Excel Suck So Much?
There’s no question in my mind that a lot of serious analysis is done in(spite) Excel. I’ve worked with some very smart programmers, with PhDs in experimental science, who have “numerics” in their job description, and used Excel to make quick graphs.
The best solution I can recommend is reading The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Unfortunately I don’t have a good recommendation for a better software program. The excellent redrawings at the chartjunk blog were done in Adobe Illustrator (more info in this comment). But Illustrator costs $599, and is a complex drawing program. Honestly the sticker price, and ease of use, have kept me from trying it.
What do you use to draw graphs?